The human givens approach to psychotherapy is rapidly growing in popularity because it appears to often be both fast and reliable.

However, despite the evident abundance of anecdotal reports of the effectiveness of the approach — which practitioners and their clients experience time and again — the importance of formal research into the human givens (HG) approach is well recognised by the HGI and its members.

All human givens therapists are encouraged by the HGI to work in an outcome informed way, and the results contributed by HG therapists to-date are very promising.

Ongoing monitoring by the HGI Practice Research Network of these results indicates that where clients choose to remain in treatment to an agreed ending they typically stay in therapy with HG therapists for an average of only 3.6 sessions (with the most common number of sessions being 2) and that 90% of our clients see their HG therapist for 6 visits or fewer.

Huge potential savings

As well as being highly beneficial for our clients, this obviously means that the HG approach has the potential to save huge amounts of money for resource-starved organisations. The continuing emphasis on formal research will help the HG approach to become even more widely known and available to the people that need it.

With this in mind, one of the main objectives of the registered charity, the Human Givens Foundation (HGF), is to promote research into the human givens approach, as well as raise the funds to carry that research out. As a result of the charity's hard work there are now numerous significant research projects completed or in progress.

They include:

NHS Practice Research Project

A partially HGF-funded study of HG efficacy within an NHS practice in Luton was carried out by Dr Gina Johnson, with the help of three HG therapists. The findings from this study were written up by an international research team and published in the British Psychological Society journal, ‘Psychology and Psychotherapy, Theory, Research and Practice’.

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Reference citation:
Andrews, W., Twigg, E., Minami, T., & Johnson, G,. (2011). Piloting a practice research network: a 12-month evaluation of the Human Givens approach in primary care at a general medical practice. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. Advance online publication. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8341.2010.02004.x 
Copies of the paper, which is ‘in press’ can be obtained by emailing the 1st author, Bill Andrews (wandrews22@mac.com)

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This robust example of a study using highest quality practice based evidence suggested that the HG therapy was very effective and very well accepted by the majority of clients. Furthermore, the results compared very favourably with the results from the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies pilot site data.

The HGI Research Practice Network

The HGI Research Practice Network was set up in association with the HGF by Bill Andrews to both raise awareness of the need for formal research and develop the use of progress and outcome measures in practice. The CORE system of measurement has been adopted as the research tool of choice as CORE is already well established within many UK primary care settings and is acceptable to the Department of Health as a validated reliable system.

Multi-site Human Givens Institute Practice Research Network
(HGI PRN – www.hgiprn.org) study

The Luton study above acted as the pilot project for a wider six-month study involving 30 HG therapists working in a wide variety of settings up and down the country (in either private practice or publicly funded practice), conducted between October 2007 and March 2008. Participating practitioners committed to monitor outcomes for all clients seen over the six month period using the valid and reliable CORE outcome measures and shared annonymized data across the internet using the sophisticated online CORENET system (www.coreims-online.co.uk) as the research tool. The results from this study were found to compare very favourably with the Luton study results and are in the process of being written up for publication.

Ongoing HGIPRN study

From April 2008 to the present, many of the practitioners involved in the original six month evaluation have carried on to contribute their data and many others have joined the network. All new practitioners are invited to contribute their data on an ongoing basis. The results are kept up to date on an annual basis and published on the network website at www.hgiprn.org.

3 years data analysis

The first three years of data collected within the network is currently being processed by an independent international team led by Takuya Mainami from the University of Madison, Wisconsin. Takuya is a leading expert in the field of benchmarking and the findings from this study will be a major contribution to the knowledge and evidence base for the HG approach. Publication is expected towards the end of 2012.

HG and Trauma Treatment

While the HG approach appears anecdotally to be effective in trauma treatment this is now being investigated in detail with a cohort of over 200 serious psychological trauma cases. This is work in progress and will hopefully be ready for publication in 2012.

HG and wellbeing of adolescents

Yvonne Yates and Cathy Atkinson from Manchester University explored the detail of the HG approach in working with teenagers and recently published their findings in ‘Pastoral Care in Education’. This beautifully written paper really conveys a lot of detail about the approach. Copies of the paper can be obtained by emailing Cathy at: Cathy.Atkinson@manchester.ac.uk

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Reference citation:
Yates, Y and Atkinson, C. (2011) Using Human Givens therapy to support the well-being of adolescents: a case example.  Pastoral Care in Education, 29, 1, 35-47.

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MA Research through Nottingham Trent University

2010 saw a cohort of 11 students participate in a wide variety of research projects for their research dissertations. This work is in progress and in time will lead to more peer reviewed publications. An additional cohort commenced this January 2011 and a further cohort will commence in 2012.

The Network Expands

Just as the Luton study formed the pilot for the development of the HGIPRN, after four years of leading by example in how to approach the gathering of robust practice based evidence, the HGIPRN has itself now widened its remit to encourage many others on the international arena to also set about gathering evidence of the effectiveness of their approach in similar ways. The HGIPRN now sits within this expanded structure that is known as the Pragmatic Research Network. It is to be hoped that others can learn about the HG research journey and more about HG in this way and a spirit of collaboration will be fostered. More about the new developments can be found on the Pragmatic Research Network blog at www.pragmaticresearchnetwork.blogspot.com

If you have completed the HG Diploma and are interested in participating in the work of the network then please read about it on the blog and at www.hgiprn.org and contact Bill Andrews at wandrews22@mac.com.

Further information:

There are many more case histories and examples in the book 'An Idea in Practice: Using the human givens approach' which was shortlisted for MIND's Book of The Year award in 2008.

In addition, lots of case histories and examples of the human givens approach in practice are included in the wide variety of articles in our archive.

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