People of color’s relative valuing of having therapist performance data inform the referral/assignment process

Abstract

Psychotherapists possess measurement-based effectiveness strengths and weaknesses in treating patients with different problems. Moreover, patients report wanting to use these data to optimize their referral/assignment to a therapist. As one way of supporting this value, purposefully matching patients to therapists’ problem-specific strengths has promoted better outcomes than usual case assignment, especially for People of Color (POC). Therapists also possess measurement-based strengths and weaknesses in treating patients with different racial/ethnic identities, and patients report wanting access to this information too. Moreover, naturalistic matching to therapists’ identity-specific strengths has demonstrated preliminary efficacy. Thus, leveraging therapist performance data holds promise for redressing racial/ethnic disparities in psychotherapy. However, additional work is needed to understand the extent to which POC, specifically, view therapist effectiveness data on what and who they treat as valued inputs into treatment decision-making, including how they compare to other held values. This study used an adapted discounting paradigm to explore such relative valuing among 162 POC. Generally, participants indicated they would sacrifice other common treatment values to see a therapist with a known success rate of approximately 70–80% in treating patients with like problems or identities. The findings help inform how to better serve the needs of historically marginalized individuals.

Keywords

• therapist effectiveness data
• psychotherapy referrals/case assignment
• racial/ethnic mental health care disparities
• people of color’s values