Future directions for the psychotherapeutic treatment of shame: A scoping study

Course overview

This course is based upon material published in the University of Houston library and is available online. This study uses Arksey and OMalleys (2005) framework for scoping studies and references Rubin and Bellamys (2012) discussion on evidence-based practice to scope the current literature concerning the use of psychotherapy to treat shame in adolescents and to develop a research question. The author focused on shame in adolescents and explored ways in which social work practitioners understand and treat shame during the identity versus role confusion stage of development. While definitions of shame vary across the scholarly literature, many of them include similar elements. Morrison (2011) defines shame as a negative feeling about the state of the whole self, a noxious conviction that the self is bad, defective, a failure and emphasizes the pervasive sense of self-condemnation (p. 25). Recurring themes and therapeutic approaches for managing shame in the therapeutic context are reviewed and summarized. The findings of this scoping study suggest that while the preponderance of the literature points towards the importance of addressing shame and its associated psychopathologies within the therapeutic context, there are few scholarly works that address how to reduce shame in a psychotherapy context and none that present data from studies whose designs were experimental. This paper calls for developing an evidence-based body of research into how best to treat shame in psychotherapy settings. Implications for social work practice, education, and research are discussed. This course on psychotherapy is designed for social workers, professional counselors, psychologists, nurses, and substance abuse counselors, who do clinical work. In addition, this course is appropriate for beginning, intermediate and advanced level practitioners who wish to develop their knowledge of psychotherapy. The course material includes a literature review of psychotherapy with adolescents. It may also be useful for licensed clinicians who require continuing clinical education courses for license renewal. The course is based on a journal article that includes research. It contains statistical analysis and data that some clinicians enjoy reading and others do not. A significant benefit of reading research-based articles for continuing education is they provide practitioners with the latest findings in their field. Authors: Sheer Learning Objectives: This course will provide the practitioner with detailed information regarding psychotherapy. Specifically, a professional will: Describe how shame may be especially impactful during adolescents Identify how to reduce shame in a psychotherapy context Recognize which themes of shame are recurring. Citation: Sheer, J. Future directions for psychotherapeutic treatment of shame: A scoping study. PERSPECTIVES ON SOCIAL WORK, 43.