Aims: This study addresses the effects of structured training on the development of coding skills used in psychotherapy process research. Method: Participants included graduate trainees enrolled in an APA approved Clinical PhD programme. A course outline for training is reviewed and examined in relation to ratings of therapist techniques used during psychotherapy sessions. Results: The effects of this structured training protocol for raters resulted in good to excellent levels of interrater reliability. Different groups of raters were compared along multiple factors such as level of graduate training, training received on a particular measure, and psychotherapy experience. Discussion: The implications of these findings for rater training in psychotherapy process research are discussed.

This article summarizes empirical research and theory on the outpatient treatment of comorbid depressed-borderline patients and presents relevant clinical examples in a format intended to be useful to clinicians. Specific focus is placed on a recent article by M. J. Hilsenroth, J. A. DeFife, M. M. Blake, and T. D. Cromer (2007) reporting therapist interventions found more frequently in the psychotherapy of comorbid depressed and borderline patients who reported both statistical and clinically significant gains over the course of treatment. The specific techniques being recommended include providing structure at the outset of therapy, suggesting specific activities or tasks to be done between sessions, maintaining an active focus on treatment topics, supportive exploration of difficult topics and shifts in mood, and examining cyclical relational patterns. This set of techniques might be considered especially useful in the development of an integrative therapeutic approach for treating comorbid depressed and borderline patients in outpatient clinical practice. The applied implications and limitations of this approach are discussed.

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