Undergraduates Can Learn About Behavior Therapy by Using It to Help Others

Behavior therapy often involves clients in 'learning by doing' - for instance, by practicing relaxation or social skills or trying feared behaviors (e.g., Spiegler & Guevremont, 2003). I apply the principle of learning by doing when I teach behavior therapy to upper-level undergraduates by asking them to use behavior therapy procedures to help a person overcome a mental health problem. Over the past 12 years I have used this assignment with over 500 students. I felt confident originally about the appropriateness of this assignment because research comparing treatment outcomes of clients randomly assigned to either briefly trained paraprofessional therapists (e.g., hospital workers and college students) or mental health professionals has repeatedly found that the outcomes of the paraprofessionals are relatively good (Hattie, Sharpley, & Rogers, 1984). This article describes the structure and evaluations of the assignment as I most recently used it.