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General
General
Is this approach good for me?
Is this approach good for me?
One of the first things one notices when looking for a psychotherapist or a coach is that there are different approaches, different schools. The question naturally arises - Which approach is right for me? You start googling what they are and how they differ from each other. You will find that there are many of them and it is not easy to navigate through them. So you may be pleased to know that scientific research shows that all the common and established approaches work equally well.
This means that you don't have to worry about taking the "wrong approach" in this respect. It's all about what suits you the best, personally. One could even say that it is more about how you match with the psychologist on basis of your personalities. That is to say, even two psychologists with the same therapeutic approach will not be exactly the same. Everyone is different as a person, and that shows in the sessions, in their work.
You can read about various approaches here "Ako si nájsť správneho psychológa".
Where does the Integrative Approach fit into this? The integrative approach is not uniform. Each psychotherapist / coach with this approach integrates in their own way and from different sources. My main resource is Solution Focused Therapy and to that I add other approaches I mention above on the page. While the integrative approach tries to be flexible and adapt to the client, that still doesn't mean it will work for everyone.
While the idea of integration is to select the best of different approaches, this does not mean that this approach is superior to the others. Although I personally, like any therapist, try to develop my approach and myself to help my clients as much as possible. In the interest of transparency and fairness, I want to caution against statements that any one approach is the "best" and most effective and "guaranteed" to help you. This style of text suggests a misleading and unprofessional approach.
In the end, I'll repeat what matters most - how you feel about the human side of a given psychologist. Unfortunately, you can't find that out completely in advance, but you can get some impression of the person from the site and their articles or interviews. Remember that if the psychologist doesn't suit you after a few sessions, you can change him or her at any time. The important thing is that the psychotherapy environment is a safe and stimulating environment for you. Feel free to look around my site and consider giving me the opportunity to be a professional guide through your journey of mental health treatment or personal development. Further reading about my approach HERE..
I currently work with people above 18 years old.
Whats the difference between coaching and therapy?
Whats the difference between coaching and therapy?
International coaching federation (ICF) defines coaching as "partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential". The purpose of coaching is often about performance, improvement, learning, or development in some area(s) of the life.
According to American Psychological Association (APA) "psychotherapy is a collaborative treatment based on the relationship between an individual and a psychologist. Grounded in dialogue, it provides a supportive environment that allows you to talk openly with someone who’s objective, neutral, and nonjudgmental. You and your psychologist will work together to identify and change the thought and behavior patterns that are keeping you from feeling your best." Psychotherapy treats dysfunctional emotional reactions, ways of thinking, and patterns of behavior. It helps a person overcome these problems and live a happier, healthier and more productive life. Depending on the person's needs, psychotherapy helps to relieve problems and symptoms, but also to discover the psychological roots and hidden causes of the problems and symptoms in question, thereby promoting functioning in life and emotional healing in the person. In psychotherapy, a person gains insight into the problem, explores the possibilities of its solution and also learns skills to better cope with future challenges in life.
Descriptions tell us that therapy and coaching are intertwined. Therapy is more oriented towards restoring everyday social and emotional functioning. Coaching, on the other hand, is about developing this functioning further, taking it to the next level. In both cases, it can be either one specific part of functioning and feeling, or several parts, or functioning and feeling, broadly speaking. This depends on the client, his needs and goals.
It's okay if you're not sure exactly what you need. I offer my sessions as one service, and we'll talk about what you need and whether I can provide it to you at the initial session.
Sources:
ICF - The International Coaching Federation (section What is Coaching?)
Success rate of the therapy
Success rate of the therapy
There are no guaranteed, 100% working methods or ways of treating mental health and facilitating personal growth. If someone describes their services in this way, it is misleading.
No medicine, not even a very good one, has 100% effectiveness. Similarly, therapy and coaching may not always meet all the goals set at the start of the treatment. Because there are so many very different people with different problems, of varying severity and in unique life situations, it is very difficult to express therapy success rates with a single number. Just like in medicine, it makes a difference whether you go to the doctor with chronic back pain or a broken finger. The success rate of treatment is very different in these cases, with broken finger the expectations are very favourable, but with chronic pain, outcomes are hard to predict.
However, after several decades of psychological research and thousands of clinical studies and their analyses, the consensus is that psychotherapy is effective for a wide range of mental health problems, and most clients are able to function well in life again after psychotherapy. For a summary of the research in English, see the resolution report of American Psychological Association (2012). I will personally do my best to make you feel safe in my office and to make our meetings useful for you.
Scientific research with one graph: in this figure, zero means low efficiency and one means very high efficiency. The colored dots represent different comparisons of psychotherapy in adults with depression. We are interested in the column on the far right, indicated by the red rectangle. The green point in this column is close to 0.8, indicating high effectiveness of the therapy compared to a group of people who have not yet received therapy and are waiting for it (the so-called "waiting list" condition). The research involved almost 300 clinical trials (each trial involves hundreds of people, so the total number is in the hundreds of thousands).
Source of the image (in study as Fig.1): Munder, T., Flückiger, C., Leichsenring, F., Abbass, A. A., Hilsenroth, M. J., Luyten, P., Rabung, S., Steinert, C., & Wampold, B. E. (2019). Is psychotherapy effective? A re-analysis of treatments for depression. Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, 28(03), 268–274. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2045796018000355
Risks and adverse effects of therapy
Risks and adverse effects of therapy
As in medicine, sometimes side effects can occur in therapy too. This is true in general, for all approaches. Although informing clients about possible side effects is rare, it should be an ethical obligation.
To begin with, it is important to say that unreasonable expectations are also a risk. Change, especially major change, requires patience, but above all a willingness to invest in your self-care, your personal development, your mental health.
Side effects are a broad term. In broad terms, it is any potentially undesirable and adverse experience during or after therapy. In a study looking at adverse effects defined in this way, regardless of their intensity (Strauss et al., 2021), 83.2% out of 244 people reported experiencing at least one adverse effect while they were seeing a therapist. Most common were Resurfacing of unpleasant memories, Feeling to be more under stress, Experiencing more of unpleasant feelings. You can see all the effects in picture below.
In a narrower sense, adverse effects are understood as "a clear worsening of symptoms associated with a decrease in subjectively perceived well-being or leading to a reduction in the ability to function adequately socially in one or more areas of life, occurring in the course of, or as a consequence of, psychotherapy" (Polákovská, 2018). Studies have estimated the incidence of adverse effects defined in this way to be in the range of 5-10%.
Therapy is also designed to work through these issues and overcome any complications. The first step to working with side effects is to identify and monitor them. For this purpose there are measurement feedback systems. To read more about them, see “My approach”.
Scientific research in one chart: in this figure we see the incidence of adverse effects in a broader sense, expressed as a percentage. A person could report more than one adverse effect, so each column could have values from 0% to 100%. The study includes 330 people.
Source of the image (in study as Figure 1): Pourová, M., Řiháček, T., Chvála, L., Vybíral, Z., & Boehnke, J. R. (2023). Negative effects during multicomponent group-based treatment: A multisite study. Psychotherapy Research, 33(3), 282–297. https://doi.org/10.1080/10503307.2022.2095237
Sources: Polákovská, L. (2018). Nežádoucí účinky psychoterapie. Psychoterapie, 2(12), 115–131. URL: https://journals.muni.cz/psychoterapie/article/view/10455/9432
Strauss, B., Gawlytta, R., Schleu, A., & Frenzl, D. (2021). Negative effects of psychotherapy: Estimating the prevalence in a random national sample. BJPsych Open, 7(6), e186. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjo.2021.1025
Medication - psychological pharmacologics
Medication - psychological pharmacologics
Only psychiatrist - medical doctor can prescribe medication and make decisions about pharmacological teratment. As a psychologist, I cannot prescribe any medications, nor do I make any decisions about their use. If necessary, I will recommend you to see a psychiatrist. If you are already taking medication, any changes to medication (changing doses, discontinuing, changing pills, etc.) should be discussed with a psychiatrist.
You can also visit a psychiatrist anytime you want, without previous recommendation from general practitioner or a psychologist. However I recommend you to check your insurance to see how it works for you in this country.
Long-standing and extensive research shows that a combination of psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy (medication) is more effective than treatment with one or the other alone. Therefore, for more serious conditions, it is best to be under the care of both professionals working together at the same time. On the other hand, it is important to me that clients do not take medication unnecessarily if their condition does not require it.
In this figure, the black dots to the right of the dividing line (point zero) represent the research result in favour of combination therapy. It can be seen that all the sub-results (squares and circles), and the overall result below marked in red, are to the right of point 0. The research included 650,514 people.
Source of picture (in study as Figure 4): Leichsenring, F., Steinert, C., Rabung, S., & Ioannidis, J. P. A. (2022). The efficacy of psychotherapies and pharmacotherapies for mental disorders in adults: An umbrella review and meta‐analytic evaluation of recent meta‐analyses. World Psychiatry, 21(1), 133–145. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20941
Ako vyhľadať klinického psychológa / psychiatra?
Ako vyhľadať klinického psychológa / psychiatra?
Klinického psychológa / psychiatra môžete vyhladať cez stránku vašej zdravotnej poisťovne (kliknite na odkaz danej poisťovne):
UNION - v kolónke Odbornosť zvoľte psychológia / psychiatria
About my services
About my services
How does it work?
How does it work?
First you arrange an initial consultation by phone or email. This consultation is done in person or online via Google meets, as are all sessions.
The initial consultation is free and lasts 50 minutes, the same as a standard session. At the initial consultation we will discuss what brings you here and what are your expectations. We will assess whether therapy / coaching is appropriate to achieve your goals.
The frequency of sessions depends on the agreement. Usually it is 1x a week or 1x every two weeks. The length of therapy/coaching is highly individual. The usual length is a few months, but for larger, deeper changes it can be more. It is common to meet with a client 5-10 times once a week at the beginning and the remaining few meetings are once a month or as needed.
If you are interested in routinne outcome and progress monitoring of the therapy/coaching, I will prepare a system of personalised questionnaires for you to complete before / after selected sessions. This is optional but recommended as a tool to improve the quality of the service. You can read more about routinne progress monitoring in "My approach". .
Every 5 sessions or so, we will review the progress of the therapy/coaching together and decide whether to continue or stop. The aim of this evaluation is to avoid unnecessarily prolonging the therapy / coaching.
Do you also work in the late afternoon?
Do you also work in the late afternoon?
Yes, I can arrange a session with you between 9am - 7pm, Monday - Thursday and Friday mornings.
Late show-up and session cancellation
Late show-up and session cancellation
In the event of a late show-up, I cannot extend the session, so I recommend leaving plenty of time to arrive or set up your PC / laptop - to make the most of your session time.
If you cancel more than 24h before the session, I charge 50% of the session price. If you do Not show up without notice, I charge 100% of the session price. Please let me know if you have to cancel the session.
Do you do formal psychological assessment for documentation?
Do you do formal psychological assessment for documentation?
If you need to document your condition, for example for the legal authorities and work (sick leave) or insurance company, you need to see a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist. I do NOT do psychodiagnostics for medical documentation purposes. However, I am proficient in psychiatric diagnoses (as any therapist should be).
Code of Ethics
Code of Ethics
Psychotherapy is a service that requires adherence to high ethical standards. All psychotherapists are bound by these ethical principles, which are written in the Code of Ethics. You can find Code of Ethics of psychotherapist on the website of Slovakian psychotherapeutic society (Slovenskej psychoterapeutickej spoločnosti - SPS) here: https://psychoterapeuti.org/sps/stranka/zdruzenie-eticky-kodex
This code is adapted from code of European Association for Psychotherapy (EAP) and you can find the original version in english language here: https://www.europsyche.org/quality-standards/eap-guidelines/statement-of-ethical-principles/
I adhere to this code when providing any of my services.
Máte ešte nejaké otázky?
Máte ešte nejaké otázky?
Ak máte ešte nejaké otázky, skúste sa pozrieť na článok od Ligy za duševné zdravie - "Najčastejšie otázky pri psychických problémoch". Nájdete tam odpoveď na tieto otázky:
Má človek nejakú predispozíciu na to, aby ochorel alebo to závisí len od životných okolností?
Ako zistím, že potrebujem pomoc psychológa, alebo psychiatra?
Aký je rozdiel medzi psychológom a psychiatrom, koho mám so svojim problémom navštíviť?
Aké sú najčastejšie duševné poruchy?
Kam mám ísť cez deň? Kto mi poradí?
Kam mám ísť večer, v noci?
Potrebujem odporúčanie praktického lekára?
Mám akútny problém, nie som schopný ísť k odborníkovi. Na koho sa môžem aspoň telefonicky obrátiť?
Ja, môj príbuzný alebo známy má akútny problém v zahraničí, kam sa môže obrátiť?
Má ísť so mnou niekto k psychológovi/psychiatrovi? Rodinný príslušník, alebo priateľ?
Ako sa lieči depresia?
Sú antidepresíva návykové?
Môj blízky rozpráva o samovražde. Aký je vlastne stav človeka, ktorý sa rozhodne pre samovraždu?
Beriem dlhší čas lieky, ale môj stav je stále nedobrý. Čo mám urobiť?
Lekár nemá voľný termín a chce ma objednať až o 10 dní. Vydržím dovtedy?
Bol som dlho v nemocnici hospitalizovaný na psychiatrickej klinike a stále nie som v poriadku. Čo ďalej?
Máme v rodine člena rodiny, ktorý je „určite“ chorý. Ako postupovať?
Počul som, že sa možno liečiť aj bez liekov. Je to tak?
Služby psychoterapeuta sú pre mňa veľmi nákladné. Čo môžem urobiť?
Ako je chránená anonymita pacienta, môžem ísť niekam inkognito?
Mám starších rodičov, o ktorých sa starám. Robím to dobre?
Mám podozrenie, že moje dieťa užíva drogy. Potrebujem sa s niekým poradiť.
Neviem ako je organizovaná psychologická starostlivosť u nás.
Ako funguje psychiatrická starostlivosť na Slovensku?
Platí „rajonizácia“? Ak nechcem, aby ma niekto spoznal v ambulancii, smiem ísť inam?
Možno si sám naordinovať lieky, ktoré lekáreň predá?
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