Dive into placebo effects in clinical trials, psychotherapy, and even conditions like Parkinson’s. Can a sugar pill really help someone heal? And what if it’s not just the pill, but the expectation of benefit, that drives the outcomes?

In this episode, Dr. Bruce Wampold sits down with Dr. John Kelley, one of the world’s leading placebo researchers, to explore how belief, expectation, empathy and the therapeutic relationship profoundly influence outcomes in both medicine and psychotherapy. Plus, they unpack a groundbreaking study that not only changed how we think about placebo effects, but how we think about healing itself.

👉 If you're a clinician, researcher, or just curious about the mind-body connection, this one’s for you.

🧠 Featuring:

• John Kelley, PhD | Deputy Director of the Program in Placebo Studies & the Therapeutic Encounters, Harvard Medical School; Licensed Psychologist, Massachusetts General Hospital
• Bruce Wampold, PhD | Emeritus Professor, University of Wisconsin - Madison; Author of The Great Psychotherapy Debate

🔔 Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share — and stay tuned for more deep dives into the science of healing.

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The Making Therapy Better podcast is brought to you by CarePaths EHR, an electronic health records system designed to help you improve your therapy outcomes. (https://www.carepaths.com)

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The Making Therapy Better podcast is produced and edited by Kevin Riordan and Geissy Araujo.

Intro/outro music is by Chris Haugen and is free for public use.

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#PlaceboEffect #Psychotherapy #Therapy #MindBody #JohnKelley #BruceWampold #Healing #Expectations #clinicalpsychology #HarvardMedicalSchool #PsychotherapyResearch #MentalHealth

In this inspiring episode, Bruce sits down with Dr. Louis Castonguay from Pennsylvania State University to delve into the evolution and current state of psychotherapist training and education. The discussion covers a broad range of topics, from the risks of holding rigidly to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) in training programs to importance of intellectual humility and the diminishing focus on foundational psychotherapy skills. Dr. Castonguay argues for an integrated training model that emphasizes trans-theoretical skills and exposing trainees to a wider range of theoretical orientations and perspectives, perhaps especially in programs that will still primarily focus on CBT. The episode also touches on the broader social and existential relevance of psychotherapy in today's complex world. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the future of psychotherapist training and supervision.

Dr. Louis Castonguay was awarded the Lifetime Contribution Award by the Society for Psychotherapy Research and is the author of numerous books including How and Why Are Some Therapists Better Than Others?: Understanding Therapist Effects.

Dr. Bruce Wampold, your host, is one of the most prominent psychotherapy researchers alive today and has co-authored the hugely influential books on this topic: The Great Psychotherapy Debate: The Evidence for What Makes Psychotherapy Work and the newest edition of Persuasion and Healing: A Comparative Study of Psychotherapy

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The Making Therapy Better podcast is brought to you by CarePaths EHR, an electronic health records system designed to help you improve your therapy outcomes. (https://www.carepaths.com)

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Follow the Making Therapy Better project!

• Website: http://www.makingtherapybetter.com
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@makingtherapybetter
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• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/makingtherapybetter
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The Making Therapy Better podcast is produced and edited by Kevin Riordan.

Intro/outro music is by DELOSound and is free for use under the Pixabay Content License.

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In this engaging episode, Bruce sits down with Dr. Julia Frank to discuss their collaboration on the newly revised edition of 'Persuasion and Healing,' a groundbreaking book on the science and philosophy of psychotherapy originally written by Julia’s father, Jerome Frank. The book has shaped generations of psychotherapists—including Bruce himself—and remains one of the most influential works in the field. Bruce and Julia delve into the rich history behind the seminal work, Jerome Frank’s unique background, the evolution of psychotherapy research, and the critical role of myth and ritual in therapeutic outcomes. This episode is essential listening for anyone interested in the fundamental principles that underpin the effectiveness of psychotherapy across various approaches.

Julia Frank, M.D. is emeritus faculty at the George Washington University School of Medicine, director of the Five Trimesters Clinic for pregnant and postpartum women, and co-author of the 2025 edition of 'Persuasion and Healing: A Comparative Study of Psychotherapy.’ Bruce Wampold, Ph.D. is a leading psychotherapy researcher, developer of the contextual model of psychotherapy, and co-author of ‘The Great Psychotherapy Debate: The Evidence for What Makes Psychotherapy Work.’

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The Making Therapy Better podcast is brought to you by CarePaths EHR, an electronic health records system designed to help you improve your therapy outcomes. (https://www.carepaths.com)

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Follow the Making Therapy Better project:

• Website: http://www.makingtherapybetter.com
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@makingtherapybetter
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• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/makingtherapybetter
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/therapybetter
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9223245/

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The Making Therapy Better podcast is produced and edited by Kevin Riordan.

Intro/outro music is by DELOSound and is free for use under the Pixabay Content License.

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Why haven’t psychotherapy outcomes improved in decades, despite hundreds of new treatment models and thousands of new randomized controlled trials?

In this special episode of the Making Therapy Better podcast, renowned psychotherapy researchers Bruce Wampold and Scott Miller discuss how the field’s obsession with inventing and testing treatment methods may have distracted us from strengthening the relational skills that we know drive better treatment outcomes. Bruce and Scott explore why therapy outcomes have plateaued, what makes some therapists consistently more effective than others, and how clinical training must evolve to focus on measurable interpersonal skills.

Bruce Wampold, Ph.D. is Emeritus Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and among the most influential psychotherapy researchers alive today. Scott Miller, Ph.D. is the founder of the International Center for Clinical Excellence and a pioneer in improving clinical training through deliberate practice and measurement-based care.

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The Making Therapy Better podcast is brought to you by CarePaths EHR, an electronic health records system designed to help you improve your therapy outcomes. (https://www.carepaths.com)

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Follow the Making Therapy Better project:

- Website: (http://www.makingtherapybetter.com)

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The Making Therapy Better podcast is produced and edited by Kevin Riordan.

Intro/outro music is by DELOSound and is free for use under the Pixabay Content License.

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Zac Imel, PhD is a professor and Director of clinical training in the counseling department at the University of Utah as well as co-founder and Chief Psychotherapy Science officer at Lyssn.io, an AI-powered assessment platform for behavioral health and human services. He has had over 50 papers published in academic journals, with a particular interest in assessing and improving the quality of mental health services in a variety of settings.

In this episode, Zac talks to Bruce about his work at Lyssn.io, and how they have used natural language processing to analyze psychotherapy and crisis counseling interactions. Bruce and Zac discuss how cutting edge statistical models are revolutionizing psychotherapy research by allowing for faster analysis of larger sample sizes than ever before. Bruce asks Zac to speculate on how this technology could be used to help therapists improve over the course of their careers and what else he thinks the future holds in terms of the applications of artificial intelligence to mental health services.

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The intro and outro music is the Borromeo String Quartet performing Beethoven's "String Quartet No. 3 in D Major" http://www.makingtherapybetter.com

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Daisy Singla, PhD is a clinical psychologist, associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, and senior scientist with the Institute for Mental Health Policy Research at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. She has led some of the largest clinical psychotherapy trials in the world, exploring methods for increasing access to mental health services in diverse cultures and settings around the world. She has received awards from the American Psychological Association and the Society Psychotherapy Research, and in 2018 she became the youngest ever recipient of the Pragmatic Clinical Study Award.

In this episode, Daisy talks to Bruce about her work to increase access to mental health services in low-income communities around the world, including in rural India and Uganda. She explains how the task sharing model makes it possible to leverage the expertise of mental health professionals along with motivated trainees from local communities to scale up evidence-based treatments in high need areas. She also describes the training and supervision models they employ and offers her insights on how what she’s learned through this work can be applied in North America.

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The intro and outro music is the Borromeo String Quartet performing Beethoven's "String Quartet No. 3 in D Major" http://www.makingtherapybetter.com

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Michael Garrett MD is professor emeritus of Clinical Psychiatry at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, and previously served as medical director of the Department of Psychiatry at North Central Bronx Hospital, and Deputy Director of Psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital Medical Center in Manhattan. He is the author of Psychotherapy for Psychosis: Integrating Cognitive-Behavioral and Psychodynamic Treatment, which won Second Place in the American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award, Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing Category. His clinical and academic work has focused on better understanding the experience of psychosis and how it can be effectively treated with psychotherapy.

In this episode, Bruce talks to Michael about his experience working with clients exhibiting schizophrenia and other psychotic symptoms. Michael explains his understanding of psychosis as originating from a combination of biological predispositions and environmental factors and describes how his integration of both cognitive behavioral and psychodynamic approaches has helped numerous patients who would be considered untreatable by anything other than medication under the previous paradigm. He shares his hopes for the future of psychotherapeutic interventions for psychosis while recognizing that the field is still in the very early stages of understanding how to treat these extremely difficult cases.

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The intro and outro music is the Borromeo String Quartet performing Beethoven's "String Quartet No. 3 in D Major" http://www.makingtherapybetter.com

Making Therapy Better is sponsored by CarePaths https://www.carepaths.com

Jerome is a Professor of Social Work at New York University as well as a member of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare, and has sat on editorial boards for the Clinical Social Work Journal and Evolutionary Psychology. He is the author of more than 300 publications appearing in journals in psychology, philosophy, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and social work, and a number of books, including The loss of sadness: How psychiatry transformed normal sorrow into depressive disorder, which was named Best Psychology Book of 2007 by the Association of American Publishers

In this episode, Bruce and Jerome talk about the history of the DSM and psychiatric diagnosis, and Jerome’s working definition of mental disorder as a harmful deviation from biologically designed functioning. They also touch on the fact that a large portion of people who benefit from psychotherapy are not actually suffering from a diagnosable disorder. Jerome criticizes the current system that requires a diagnosis for insurance reimbursement and the difficult ethical situation this forces clinicians into. Finally, they discuss more generally the problems caused by the medicalization of mental health care and how to move forward.

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The intro and outro music is the Borromeo String Quartet performing Beethoven's "String Quartet No. 3 in D Major"

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Making Therapy Better is sponsored by CarePaths https://www.carepaths.com