Mindfulness Skills in Mental Health Professionals: Impacts on the Therapeutic Alliance

Landers, Therese (2014) Mindfulness Skills in Mental Health Professionals: Impacts on the Therapeutic Alliance. Coursework Masters thesis, University of Southern Queensland. (Unpublished)


Abstract

Scores on the Five Factor Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) for 43 mental health professionals were compared to their ratings on the therapist’s version of the Working Alliance Inventory – short form (WAI-S) to explore a relationship between the mindfulness skills of the therapist and the strength of the therapeutic alliance. With canonical correlational analysis on the five factors of mindfulness scale and the three elements of the working alliance scale, a positive relationship was established in particular between the Observing factor of mindfulness and the Bond element of the working alliance. These findings supported the rationale for a further study that was undertaken to assess whether therapist’s mindfulness skills could be improved with specific training. Paired t-tests were conducted on pre-training and post-training scores for 22 mental health professionals who engaged in combined theoretical and experiential based mindfulness training. Mean mindfulness scores of the participants increased significantly across all five mindfulness factors after training. Implications for mindfulness training for mental health professionals and the influence on therapeutic outcomes are discussed


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Item Type: Thesis (Non-Research) (Coursework Masters)
Item Status: Live Archive
Additional Information: Current UniSQ staff and students can request access to this thesis. Please email research.repository@unisq.edu.au with a subject line of SEAR thesis request and provide: Name of the thesis requested and Your name and UniSQ email address
Faculty/School / Institute/Centre: Historic - Faculty of Health, Engineering and Sciences - School of Psychology, Counselling and Community (1 Jul 2013 - 31 Dec 2014)
Supervisors: Sue Littler
Qualification: Doctor of Clinical Psychology (Clinical)
Date Deposited: 20 Nov 2025 03:23
Last Modified: 20 Nov 2025 03:23
Uncontrolled Keywords: Therapist mindfulness; working alliance; FFMQ; therapy outcomes; WAIS; psychologist training
Fields of Research (2008): 17 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 1799 Other Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 179999 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences not elsewhere classified
Fields of Research (2020): 52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5299 Other psychology > 529999 Other psychology not elsewhere classified
URI: https://sear.unisq.edu.au/id/eprint/52486

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