Helpful factors in therapeutic conversations expressed by adult asylum seeker and refugee clients
This study examined what factors in natural therapeutic conversations asylum seeker and refugee clients reported as helping them with their problems and contributing to positive changes. The clients’ therapeutic sessions with workers in a crisis center were videotaped and the articulations given by the clients and mediated by an interpreter were extracted as units of analysis. The research method was inductive qualitative content analysis. Five categories of helpful factors emerged from the analysis: helpful ways to manage problems, information, explanations and guidance received from the worker, a supportive therapy relationship and supportive worker, the possibility to talk about problems, and the client’s inner strength and perseverance. Helpful factors were related to the content of the therapeutic conversations, the clients themselves, the worker, the therapeutic relationship, and extra-therapeutic factors. The clients’ expressions of helpful factors were quite similar to what has been detected in previous qualitative research with asylum seeker and refugee clients.