Date of Award

2012

Degree Type

Dissertation

Department

Counseling, Administration, Supervision and Adult Learning

First Advisor

Welfel, Elizabeth

Subject Headings

Self-disclosure -- Psychological aspects, Psychotherapist and patient, therapist self-disclosure, court-mandated clients, forensic

Abstract

Therapist self-disclosure is a topic that continues to generate professional discourse in research literature. However, no literature has considered how therapists use self-disclosure with clients who are court-mandated into therapy. The goals of this research were to: 1) identify differences in psychologists' responses on the Self-Disclosure Questionnaire - Revised (SDQ - R) between self-referred and court-mandated clients 2) determine whether psychologists using self-disclosure with court-mandated clients endorse similar justifications for using self-disclosure as documented in the literature 3) understand how psychologists' years of experience influence self-disclosure with court-mandated clients and 4) observe whether psychologists who had graduate training/experience with self-disclosure respond differently on the SDQ - R compared with psychologists who had little or no graduate training on self-disclosure. This study found: 1) psychologists were less likely to use self-disclosure with court-mandated clients compared with self-referred clients 2) psychologists are more likely to use self-disclosure with court-mandated clients diagnosed with acute, non-chronic mental health diagnoses compared with psychotic or personality disorders 3) psychologists use similar justifications for self-disclosing with both self-referred and court-mandated clients 4) self-disclosure does not increase the longer a psychologist has been in practice and 5) although over half the participants reported receiving information about self-disclosure during graduate training, most psychologists do not generally use self-disclosure

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