Literature on "mind coaching"

[Merovinge]

I've lately been listening to some podcasts and seeing a rise in "mind coaching", even to other physicians (certainly executive coaching has been pretty hot trend as well) and wondering if anyone is aware of any literature on this. I was listening to this coach describe 100% the tenants of CBT + mindfulness approach and branding this as coaching due to being focused on the now and future rather than therapy being focused on the past. It basically distilled down to 2nd and 3rd wave psychotherapy techniques applied to improve performance rather than treat illness, and by demand these services certainly seem popular and are actually based on evidenced based techniques.

My main question is if anyone is aware of real placebo-controlled trials of coaching efficacy? I'm a bit out of the latest psychology research and wondering if this movement has legs in that field. I actually would love to see a study comparing CBT to coaching, but I suspect there are numerous reasons why this does not exist.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[dl2dp2]

I think excessive and lower middle class sounding branding is often tacky & counterproductive.

Have you seen the Tesla dashboard? You want to be the psychiatric equivalent.

Evidence-based practice based on the latest scientific results. Nothing more. Nothing less. Stop being seduced by fluff.

 

[Merovinge]

I think excessive and lower middle class sounding branding is often tacky & counterproductive.

Have you seen the Tesla dashboard? You want to be the psychiatric equivalent.

Evidence-based practice based on the latest scientific results. Nothing more. Nothing less. Stop being seduced by fluff.

I have zero interest in doing this myself, more interested in having reasonable push back when discussions come up. I am looking to see if there is any evidence basis to the work at all or if there has ever been factor analysis to determine what part of the coaching "works". My suspicion is that this is likely void of much evidence but curious if the collective knows better.

 

[FlowRate]

One of my psychotherapy supervisors said he does executive coaching, but I don't think he heavily brands that way. I also had a short elective in psychodynamic consulting to businesses which was also really interesting.

I think it might feel "off" because our core competency/brand as psychiatrists is "treatment of mental illness." Executive/performance coaching, on the other hand, is more divorced from the "patient" model and more focused on making "good/well people better." It's also done by psychotherapy trained psychiatrists, psychologists, and also lay people who have really strong branding, with probably a lot more diversity in technique and effectiveness.

But that's all about branding. I would hope that any psychotherapy, whether "for illness" or not, would be performance enhancing.

 

[WisNeuro]

It's done by clinical psychologists, but I'd say just as much if not more of the executive coaching is done from people with an I/O background. Also, these people make bank to come into a system, give some questionnaires, throw some buzzwords around and then give a set of mostly boilerplate recommendations. If I had less integrity, I'd get in on the action.

 

[Merovinge]

It's done by clinical psychologists, but I'd say just as much if not more of the executive coaching is done from people with an I/O background. Also, these people make bank to come into a system, give some questionnaires, throw some buzzwords around and then give a set of mostly boilerplate recommendations. If I had less integrity, I'd get in on the action.

This is my impression as well, are you aware of any real literature on the topic?

 

[WisNeuro]

I don't know much about "mind coaching" specifically, and suspect it's simply a good buzzword to sell your services. I think it falls under the general umbrella of executive coaching. My impression is that I/O has generally done well in the more organizational evaluation and coaching piece, and people saw an opportunity to capitalize on an offshoot of that to provide more individual services in a similar vein. From what I can tell, it's a blend of CBT based approaches with approaches that some sports psych people have been using to enhance performance in certain areas.

 

[SourceOfDenial]

I've lately been listening to some podcasts and seeing a rise in "mind coaching", even to other physicians (certainly executive coaching has been pretty hot trend as well) and wondering if anyone is aware of any literature on this. I was listening to this coach describe 100% the tenants of CBT + mindfulness approach and branding this as coaching due to being focused on the now and future rather than therapy being focused on the past. It basically distilled down to 2nd and 3rd wave psychotherapy techniques applied to improve performance rather than treat illness, and by demand these services certainly seem popular and are actually based on evidenced based techniques.

My main question is if anyone is aware of real placebo-controlled trials of coaching efficacy? I'm a bit out of the latest psychology research and wondering if this movement has legs in that field. I actually would love to see a study comparing CBT to coaching, but I suspect there are numerous reasons why this does not exist.

Probably the first reason studies don’t exist is...why would you do it in the first place?

not being rude, but just thinking about why someone would do this study in the first place.

 

[foreverbull]

I tried to do a quick search, but different companies came up and different uses of the phrase.

I don’t know much about this, but it sounds very similar to the kinds of coaching that laypeople with no psychotherapy training claim to have expertise in in order to provide therapy-lite without calling it therapy and while still trying to charge high fees to the naive public. Sounds like “life coaching.”
I’ve noticed that there’s been a broad movement for people not trained in psychotherapy but wanting to “help people” for high fees to use similar terms that suggest some kind of mental health support/motivational support (“coaching”) without characterizing it as therapy so that they don’t get shut down by state boards. They also try to use buzzwords like “evidence-based” but I’m clearly skeptical.

On a reality show I watch, one person makes bank off of being a “responsibility coach” with zero training—-she just texts and talks to people to keep them motivated to reach their fitness or weight loss goals and then gets paid—with no training whatsoever, not even basic training in nutrition or fitness.

A colleague was being hired as a consultant for someone who was working on a website and his own business for some kind of coaching, and she read his website and said, basically, “this is CBT principles under another name” (nicely) and she never heard back from him. Everyone unfamiliar with counseling theory thinks they’re inventive and innovative when they’re just stealing from well-established counseling theories/approaches and using different names to try to make their own brand to sell.

 

[MaximusMDPhD]

Not entirely on topic, but there is an emerging literature on lifestyle psychiatry. See Noordsy.

 

[deleted343839]

I don't get the sense of a strong community standard for what "coaching" is or isn't, but in my area I know it's (1) a revenue stream for psychologists who also provide traditional services or (2) what some people do when their licensure is revoked or they don't complete licensure requirements.