"What should we talk about?" The association between the information exchanged during the mental health intake and the quality of the working alliance

We investigated the association between the content of the information exchanged between clients and therapists during mental health intake and the quality of the therapeutic alliance. Thirty-eight therapists and 107 clients from four mental health clinics in Israel participated in the study. The content of information discussed was coded directly from the recorded intakes by blinded raters. Clients and therapists completed the Working Alliance Inventory immediately following the intake. Therapists spent the majority of intake time in collecting information about their clients' diagnostic symptoms and personal history and sociocultural background. Due to the high negative correlation between these factors, r(107)=-.68, p < .001, we created a measure of delta score with higher scores reflecting more discussion of personal history and sociocultural background and less discussion of diagnostic symptoms. We computed three-level hierarchical linear model analysis, with intakes nested within therapists and therapists nested within sites, to examine the association between the delta score and the working alliance, while controlling for intake duration. Results showed significant association between the delta score and clients' rating of the working alliance (ϒ200 = 0.014, p = .02), indicating that discussing more personal history and sociocultural background and less diagnostic symptoms was associated with better clients' rating of the working alliance. Therapists' rating of the working alliance was not significantly associated with the content of the information exchanged. The restricted intake time allocated to therapists dictates use of strategies to deal with time trade-offs to complete a thorough diagnostic assessment while allowing clients to tell their personal story.