Treatment Planning & Protocols Flashcards

A treatment plan for a client with borderline personality disorder incorporates ACT. Compared to DBT, ACT uniquely emphasizes:

Answer: Values-clarification and defusion as primary drivers of behavior change

While DBT emphasizes dialectics, validation, and a skills-based hierarchy, ACT uniquely centers values clarity and cognitive defusion as the primary change mechanisms.

A client discloses that they want to 'feel confident before applying for jobs.' The ACT therapist addresses this by:

Answer: Exploring whether waiting for confidence is a workable strategy and linking job-seeking to values

ACT challenges emotion-action fusion ('I must feel X before I can do Y') by exploring workability and connecting action to values rather than emotional readiness.

In ACT-based relapse prevention planning, committed action is distinguished from a mere behavioral contract because:

Answer: Committed action is anchored in the client's own values, not external accountability alone

Committed action gains its motivational power from alignment with personal values, making it intrinsically meaningful rather than externally enforced.

A culturally adapted ACT protocol for a collectivist client should primarily adjust which element?

Answer: Frame values exploration to include relational and community-centered values authentically held by the client

Cultural adaptation in ACT expands the values domain to authentically include relational and collective values without imposing individualistic value frameworks.

An ACT treatment plan indicates that a client has 'narrow behavioral repertoire.' This means the plan should prioritize:

Answer: Building flexible, values-consistent behavioral patterns across multiple life domains

A narrow behavioral repertoire signals that the client's actions are dominated by avoidance; treatment builds diverse, flexible committed action across valued domains.

During a third ACT session, a client asks: 'When will I feel better?' The most ACT-consistent therapist response is:

Answer: 'The goal of our work is not primarily to feel better but to live better, even with difficult feelings.'

ACT explicitly targets valued living rather than symptom relief, and the therapist uses this question as an opportunity to clarify the ACT model's change mechanism.

Which element distinguishes an ACT case conceptualization from a traditional cognitive-behavioral case formulation?

Answer: ACT formulations map how experiential avoidance, fusion, and values-action gaps maintain suffering

ACT case conceptualization uses the hexaflex to map how inflexibility processes (avoidance, fusion, values disconnect) perpetuate the client's problems, distinct from cognitive or learning-theory formulations.