Toward a nuanced understanding of nondisclosure in psychotherapy supervision.

Abstract

Previous research indicates that trainees often withhold important information related to their clients' progress and their reactions to supervision. Moreover, factors associated with the occurrence of supervisee nondisclosure (SND) are not well established. As one of the few studies to compare clinically related with supervision-related nondisclosure, we tested the relation of these two dimensions of the construct, as measured by Siembor and Ellis's (2012) Supervisee Nondisclosure Scales, to three important process variables: perceptions of (a) the supervisory alliance, as measured by Bahrick's (1989) Working Alliance Inventory-Trainee; (b) collaborative supervision, as measured by Rousmaniere and Ellis's (2013) Collaborative Supervision Behavior Scale; and (c) explicitly relational supervisor behaviors, as measured by Shaffer and Friedlander's (2017) Relational Behavior Scale. Participants were 257 North American trainees, predominately White female doctoral students receiving supervision in a practicum or internship setting. As hypothesized, the three process variables inversely contributed to the multivariate composite of SND, jointly accounting for roughly one quarter of the variability; alliance and relational behavior were uniquely significant contributors (24.5% and 7%, respectively). Follow-up analyses indicated that only alliance perceptions contributed unique variance (23%) to supervision-related nondisclosures, which were endorsed much more frequently than clinically related nondisclosures in this sample. (PsycINFO Database Record

Supervisee nondisclosure in clinical supervision: Cultural and relational considerations.

“…Indeed, Mehr et al (2010) and Ladany et al (1996) found that 38% and 90% of supervisees, respectively, did not disclose their negative reactions to their supervisors, and 44% withheld clinical mistakes (Ladany et al, 1996). Like others (Gibson et al, 2019;Jakob et al, 2014;Siembor & Ellis, 2012), (a) supervision-related nondisclosures were the most frequent type of SND here, but only 23% of participants withheld this information from their supervisors, and 29% indicated that it was not applicable, and (b) nearly half of our participants reported disclosing fully their clinical mistakes in supervision-only 1.4% decided not to disclose this information. The divergences are intriguing.…”

“…mistakes; CRND) and supervision-related nondisclosures (e.g., negative reactions to one's supervisor; SRND; Gibson, Ellis, & Friedlander, 2019;Jakob, Weck, Höfling, Richtberg, & Bohus, 2014;Webb & Wheeler, 1998;Yourman & Farber, 1996), SND is most often conceptualized unidimensionally (e.g., Mehr, Ladany, & Caskie, 2015). It is not surprising then that the salient constructs predictive of multidimensional SND have yet to be identified and tested.…”

Problematic psychoanalytic supervision: An interpretative phenomenological analysis study

“…They reported that the supervisees feared being considered inadequate practitioners. Likewise, other researchers have found that common reasons why supervisees avoid disclosing information include: supervisees' concerns about how they would be seen and evaluated by the supervisor (Hess et al., 2008), the supervisees' predominantly negative recollection of supervision experience (Gibson et al., 2019) and feelings of shame (Yourman & Farber, 1996).…”

Understanding supervisee nondisclosures in supervision with videorecording review and interpersonal process recall

“…Further factors include uncomfortable feelings such as embarrassment, shame, vulnerability and self‐doubt (Hess et al, 2008; Ladany et al, 1996). Experiences of a weak supervisory alliance are yet another commonly reported reason behind supervisee nondisclosures (Gibson, Ellis, & Friedlander, 2019; Hess et al, 2008; Ladany et al, 1996; Mehr et al, 2010).…”