Beyond the Outcomes: Generic Change Indicators in a video-feedback intervention with a depressed mother and her baby: a single case study

Abstract

The present single case study explored and described the intervention process and therapeutic change expression through the Generic Change Indicators model (GCI) aiming to answer the question of “What changes when you change?”. We reasoned that psychotherapy process research in child and dyadic psychotherapy is scarce, as well as needed because it accounts for the content and mechanisms related to the therapeutic change and its association with interventions’ effectiveness. To explore this possibility, we conducted a single case qualitative study to explore and describe the intervention process through the GCI within a brief intervention mentalization-informed with video-feedback, with a depressive mother and her baby. Specifically, Patient’s ongoing change was determined through the identification of Episodes of Change (EC) and the Moment of Change (MC) that occurs within it. Each MC was then labeled with one of the 19 GCIs. Results of the single case study showed that the GCI model is a feasible model to observe and comprehend dyadic interventions. GCI were observed from the beginning of the intervention, increasing the hierarchical level of the GCI throughout the intervention, and associated with the video-feedback situation. To investigate processes of intervention using the methodology here proposed, allows us to understand the intervention not only from a perspective of effectivity and outcomes but considering the ongoing therapeutic change. In this sense, research like this contributes to the growing body of evidence supporting the training and supervision of psychotherapists.

Keywords

• Psychotherapy research
• video-feedback
• early childhood intervention
• mother-child intervention
• peripartum depression.