Research at UKCP
Research is central to the future of the psychotherapy profession. Through our work we aim is to raise the profile of the profession, utilising the expertise of our membership.
UKCP’s strategic aims
- Ensuring research supports the UKCP’s policy objectives to increase access to psychotherapy.
- Improving education about research and promote its importance within the UKCP membership.
- Developing an effective system for collating clinical data from our membership.
- Combining existing and new research to improve the evidence base for psychotherapy, as well as promote its importance for wellbeing and mental health.
- Collaborating with psychotherapy researchers to define and address the needs for future research.
How we will work towards achieving these aims
- Among the UKCP members are many influential researchers. We are working to strengthen connections with our research-active members to support impactful and widespread dissemination of their work, as well as to assist us in our drive to inform policy.
- Collaboration is essential the UKCP’s research strategy to develop innovative, high-impact research. We are working to enhance connections across the board with universities, the NHS and charitable organisations.
- We will be collaborating both internally and externally to promote the importance of research within training programmes and across the profession as a whole.
Current research projects
University of Sheffield
UKCP has provided funding to Professor Michael Barkham and his team at the University of Sheffield to conduct in-depth analyses of longitudinal IAPT datasets. This research will contribute to the evidence base for psychotherapy in treating depression in adults.
NHS pathways project
UKCP is conducting a three-year-long research project tracking students in the NHS pathways pilot. We aim to understand students’ experiences providing therapy in the NHS and how their training translates to working in this environment. We are in year two of the project.
Special issue EJPC
We're collaborating with the European Journal of Psychotherapy (EJPC) on a special issue entitled “Decolonising psychotherapy and empires of the mind: Opportunities and debates.” A call for papers was issued to UKCP members and the selected articles have been sent for peer review. More information can be found on our webpage.
Research Events
UKCP is holding a one-day research event in late spring 2026 and is now accepting abstracts. The theme for this year is The evolving psychotherapy profession: practice, ethos and community. Please go to our events webpage for more information.
Get involved – connect and collaborate
We are always looking for new ways to support our members with research and to connect with non-UKCP academics and practitioners. We are actively seeking to hear more about existing research and to discuss collaborations across all modalities. Our current areas of focus include:
- New ways of assessing psychotherapy and evaluating its effectiveness
- Collaborating on, and supporting, studies of effectiveness across therapeutic modalities and client populations
- Innovative research, investigating the therapeutic process
- Practice-informed research and research-informed practice.
If you would like to get involved or discuss active research projects or proposals, please email the research team.
Research working group
As a relatively small organisation with limited resources, we have been working hard to think of ways to improve research for the organisation and the membership. To help us accomplish this, we have put together a board level Research Working Group. Members of the group include Prof Divine Charura (DCounPsych), Dr Sofie Bager-Charleson, Prof Vicky Karkou, and Dr Gella Richards.
The group will be focusing on how to better support the membership with research, whilst also addressing external research strategy.
This will include:
- Improving education and guidance about conducting psychotherapy research.
- Assessing how we may be able to support therapists to gain ethical approval to conduct research.
- Enhancing networking and collaboration opportunities.
- Promoting research funding opportunities.
Research noticeboard
Are you a UKCP member involved in a research project?
Our noticeboard aims to help psychotherapists and psychotherapeutic counsellors:
- recruit participants for a study
- notify members of ongoing research projects
- identify collaborators.
If you’re a UKCP member interested in circulating information about research to other members, please fill out this form and our research team will be in touch. Requests to post on the noticeboard will be reviewed on the 20th of every month. Those accepted will be posted on the 25th of every month for a duration of four weeks.
Please note: requests may not be accepted for a variety of reasons, including the volume of requests or the research topic.
The purpose of this research is to explore how person-centred therapy enables bi/multilingual clients to integrate different parts of themselves. Parts that may have a different cultural background and be expressed through different languages. For many clients, their own language stigmatizes a lot of emotions, or perhaps something traumatic happened to them in that language. Can that feel internally conflicting or not at all? Is a part of who the client is, missing from the therapist’s view? I am intrigued if a therapists’ awareness around bi/multilingualism and cultural differences can help clients to actualise all parts of themselves. Is there a potential for a deeper integration of self and getting closer to the ideal self, if exploration of events in native language is encouraged?
My participants will be bi- and multilingual clients, who experienced person-centred therapy in their secondary language. I will target trainee and qualified therapists reflecting on their therapeutic experience. It is likely that participants will be in therapy during their training or practice, thereby reducing the overall risk of the study.
There has not been much research published on this subject from the person-centred angle. The matter of multilingualism and culturally aware practice is relevant across the person-centred approach, from non-directivity, ability to hold therapists’ core conditions (Rogers, 1959), through matters of power dynamics in the therapeutic relationship. It can be extremely important in the skillful building of ‘psychological contact’ (Rogers, 1957) with clients.
Please contact 05774@metanoia.ac.uk.
Purpose:
- To understand how autistic clients experience the verbalised and non-verbalised UPR (Rogers, 1957, 1959) of their PCE therapists.
- To evaluate and add to existing theory and research in this area to inform best practice and training.
- To enhance allistic and autistic PCE therapists’ understanding and awareness of autistic clients’ experiences of verbalised and non-verbalised UPR.
Criteria for participants - able to answer 'yes' to these questions:
- Are you autistic (self-diagnosed or otherwise)?
- Do you have a clinical supervisor (and if a trainee, a personal therapist too)?
- Have you had at least three months of PCE therapy as a client?
- Have you experienced verbal and non-verbal communication of UPR as a client?
- Would you be willing to describe some of these experiences in a research interview?
- Would you be willing for this interview to be video-recorded?
Participation would involve an informed consent process and attending an online semi-structured interview (approximately 1-1.5 hours). The questions will be shared in advance. There is the option to check the interview transcript’s accuracy and anonymisation, and to receive a copy of the final report, if desired.
For more information, please contact rosie.hancock@spti.net.
Call for research participants who are/have been in therapy with a non-native English speaking therapist.
What am I researching?
I am researching the therapeutic experience of native English-speaking clients working with non-native English-speaking therapists in England.
The wider purpose of this research is to support both non-native English-speaking therapists as well as native English-speaking therapists in understanding different ways where the therapeutical relationship can be influenced by this set-up.
What is involved?
- joining a 60-minute online interview
- questions will be shared beforehand
- participants will need to sign a consent form ahead of the interview.
Are you eligible to take part?
Participants must:
- be a trainee or qualified psychotherapist AND be/have been in therapy with a non-native English-speaking therapist, in England for a minimum of 20 sessions
- be native English-speaking and born in England
- be a (trainee) member of an accreditation body, such as BACP, UKCP, NCS, BABT, ACP or BPS.
If you are interested, please contact me on broes.vanrenterghem@spti.net.
Links
Connect with us
Privacy | Accessibility | Sitemap | © 2025 UK Council for Psychotherapy. All rights reserved | Registered charity no. 1058545 | Company no. 3258939 - Registered in England
Like most websites, we use cookies. If this is okay with you, please close this message or read more about your options.
