Simon Fagernäs

Om mig

I graduated at the psychology program at Uppsala University in 2017. I have a background in the field of psychometrics and talent assessment for recruitment purposes. I've also worked with the development of Yomento, an app for leadership development based on core principles of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. In 2017, I switched to the field of clinical psychology and started to work with psychological treatments in an outpatient psychiatric unit at Psykiatri Nordväst in Stockholm City Council, where I still work 50 %, treating patients with depression and anxiety disorders. I am currently under training in Metacognitive Therapy (MCT).

In 2019, I started my PhD training at the Centre for Psychiatry Research at Karolinska Institutet. I work 50 % with my PhD-project, in parallell with my 50 % clinical work. 

In general, my curiosity lies in clinical supervision, therapist variables contributing to increased treatment efficacy, change-mechanisms, and metacognitive therapy.

Forskningsbeskrivning

My research is about clinical supervision and psychotherapist training. Further, I'm doing research about therapist competencies.

Currently, I me and my team are doing a triangulation of psychotherapists' clinical challenges and skill deficiencies in order to better understand the needs of support or competency development. In a mixed-methods approach we are collecting data from psychotherapists, supervisors, and patients. The goal with the triangulation is to create a more objective taxonomy of therapists clinical challenges where the therapist competencies are relevant also for the patients.

We are also running a set of studies with Single Case Experimental Design (SCED) to assess the effects of live supervision using Bug-in-the-Eye/Ear (BITE). BITE is a method for live-supervision where the therapist gets real-time guidance from the supervisor during the therapy session with the patient. In comparison to traditional methods of supervision, BITE enables real time-feedback which is one of the most important factors for maximizing procedural learning. 

We will proceed the SCED-studies with an RCT to examine different supervision formats effects on therapist competence and patient outcome. 

I'm also involved in an umbrella-review where we review previous systematic reviews of predictors and moderators of psychotherapy outcome. 

My main supervisor is Sven Alfonsson and we also have a collaboration with Ulrike Maass and her team from Potsdams University in Berlin, Germany. 

Alongside my PhD-project, I've been involved in research about how to use artificial intelligence (NLP) in qualitative psychotherapy research as well as a clinical study investigating the effects Metacognitive Therapy (MCT) in a group format for treating anxiety and depression in a naturalistic setting in an outpatient psychiatric clinic. 

Pedagogiska meriter

At the Centre for Psychiatry Research at Karolinska Institutet, I teach at the psychotherapist program. This involves teaching psychological treatments for depression and anxiety disorders and topics concerning my own research. I also supervise a theses for a MSc student and supervise students from Karolinska Institutet and Stockholms University in their clinical trainee programs. 

Utbildning

Licensed clinical psychologist