Country Coordinator Reports

Training

The development of psychotherapy, training and work with clients:

Modern psychotherapy has developed rapidly and diversely in Russia since the late 1980s. All the main modalities of psychotherapy accepted by the European Association for Psychotherapy (EAP) are now more or less represented in the psychotherapeutic community. Hundreds of professionals have been educated according to international standards and are members of various European associations. Dozens of training institutes, with a well-established tradition and their own school of psychotherapy, graduate thousands of professionals each year as part of their postgraduate education of psychologists. State medical schools train a large number of diplomaed psychotherapists.

For example, in one of the most popular fields in Russia - Gestalt therapy - the second largest training institute in the world is the Moscow Gestalt Institute (MGI). The number of qualified trainers at MGI is several hundred. Another major Russian training institute, the Moscow Institute of Gestalt and Psychodrama (MIGIP), has branches in half a hundred different regions. In addition to Gestalt therapy in Russia, body therapy, psychodrama, family systems therapy, psychoanalysis, CBT, neurolinguistic psychotherapy, art therapy, existential therapy and other areas are popular. Often practicing psychologists and psychotherapists use an integrative approach that combines several complementary areas in which they have received appropriate training. Competition in this market is quite high, as in addition to large training institutes there are many private psychological centres and departments in medical institutions as well as individual specialists.

An effective education system, a large number of highly qualified professionals and an interest in providing psychotherapeutic care have led to a high demand and popularity of the profession. There are many people here who have previously completed other higher education degrees and have extensive life experience. There are also quite a few university students who are immediately oriented towards this type of work.

However, paradoxically, research on the effectiveness of psychotherapy in accordance with international standards is almost non-existent in Russia. This is evidenced by the sparse number of publications in peer-reviewed international scientific journals and the existence of only three SPR members to date.

This is primarily due to the funding system for psychotherapy. Clients pay for their sessions, and students pay for their studies, solely out of their own funds. Health insurance is not designed to cover these costs. There are no grants for research. Nor are there large organisations with the means, interest and will to fund research. In universities, research is carried out only as part of the requirements for a thesis or dissertation. Therefore, there are no research groups, much less research schools.

Another reason is the lack of regulation of this activity by the state - a law on psychotherapy has been prepared for many years, but has not been adopted. Today in Russia, a psychologist can practice psychotherapy without medical training and a doctor of psychotherapy can practice psychotherapy without psychological training. Even the possibility of calling oneself a psychotherapist is not unambiguous and causes disagreement between psychiatrists and psychologists.

Training institutes, on their own initiative, usually require students to have an advanced degree in psychology or medicine. Medical schools, in turn, have standardised high requirements: to become a psychotherapist you need a medical degree, a specialisation in psychiatry and an additional specialisation in psychotherapy.

Furthermore, Russia lacks a history of effectiveness research , and thus a corresponding culture. Even textbooks on psychotherapy for universities cite data exclusively from Western studies. Therefore, practitioners simply do not understand why they need to expend effort and time on research, especially without any payment for this work.

Perhaps this situation in teaching will gradually change under the influence of European associations introducing the requirement to include research on the effectiveness of psychotherapy in the curricula of educational institutions.

Ongoing research programs

Separate centres and works in the field of research:

At the same time, interest in research on the effectiveness of psychotherapy and awareness of the need for it has recently emerged in some major psychotherapeutic centres and individual professionals.

Russia's largest and influential organization uniting psychotherapists of various specializations: the All-Russian Professional Psychotherapeutic League (OPPL, https://oppl.ru) publishes two scientific journals which publish research results: Russian Anthology of Psychotherapy and Psychology and Psychotherapy. A few years ago, the OPPL also published a manual dealing with research methodology in the field of professional psychotherapy.

The East European Institute of Psychoanalysis (EEIP) has a research focus among others. Its rector, Mikhail Reshetnikov, was presented by the World Research Council with the Medal of Honor for Research Excellence for the paper published in the International Journal of Current Innovations in Advanced Researches in August 2018.

In the field of Gestalt therapy, Illia Mstibovskyi, as a representative of the Southern Regional Gestalt Institute (SRGI), participated in an international group using Single Case Experimental Design (SCED) in research on the effectiveness of Gestalt therapy with anxious patients. A detailed description of teaching Gestalt therapy and a number of research of its effectiveness can be found in our chapter entitled Teaching and Conducting Gestalt Research in Russia in the Handbook for Theory, Research, and Practice in Gestalt Therapy (2nd Edition) edited by Philip Brownell. At the Fifth International Conference on Research in Gestalt Therapy, to be held in September 2022 in Hamburg, Natalia Kedrova and Polina Egorova will be presenting as representatives of the MGI research team.

Funding opportunities

-