Dyads of professionals and young patients with psychosis rated their therapeutic relationships with each other. Professionals also completed measures of attachment style, therapeutic optimism, outcome expectancy, and job attitudes regarding working with psychosis.
Professionals’ anxious attachment predicted less positive professional therapeutic relationship ratings. In exploratory directed path analysis, data also supported indirect effects, whereby anxious professional attachment predicts less positive therapeutic relationships through reduced professional therapeutic optimism and less positive job attitudes.
Professional anxious attachment style is directly associated with the therapeutic relationship in psychosis, and indirectly associated through therapeutic optimism and job attitudes. Thus, intervening in professional characteristics could offer an opportunity to limit the impact of insecure attachment on therapeutic relationships in psychosis.