Should your therapist tell you about their own mental health struggles?
This is a topic of considerable debate within psychotherapy. Some research suggests that therapists’ lived experience disclosures risk reinforcing the stigma (Barnett, 2011). However, such evidence often stems from extreme cases rather than targeted empirical investigations.
In fact, some more rigorous research indicates that therapist self-disclosure can have positive effects on therapy. For example, a study (Moody et al., 2021) found that therapists who disclosed a mental health condition from the distant past were rated more favourably than those who did not disclose or who disclosed a current condition. Similarly, evidence suggests that people are more willing to receive mental health services from therapists who have experienced the same mental health struggles (Conchar & Repper, 2014; Marino et al., 2016).
A new theory framework, Identity Leadership Theory, helps clarify how therapist self-disclosure may influence therapeutic outcomes (Haslam et al., 2020). The theory proposes that therapists can build influence by fostering a shared group identity. A key component is prototypicality, which refers to the extent to which a leader represents the group. Leaders may represent “who we are now” (average prototypicality) or “who we want to be” (aspirational prototypicality). Could therapist disclosure serve as a tool to signal this prototypicality and thus strengthen the therapeutic bond?
A new experimental study by Robertson et al. (2025) tried to address this question and investigate how different types of therapist self-disclosure shape perceptions among clients, fellow therapists, and the general public.
Methods
The research consisted of two experiments.
Study 1 employed a randomised experimental vignette design. Current therapy clients and practising therapists were recruited and randomly assigned to read one of four written scenarios (no disclosure, disclosure of professional experience, disclosure of recovered depression, or disclosure of current depression) depicting an initial group therapy session for depression. After reading the vignette, participants completed measures assessing their positive perceptions of the therapist, the therapist’s perceived expertness, expected treatment prognosis, and the therapist’s average and aspirational prototypicality.
The researchers predicted two things:
- First, that the therapist who disclosed recovered depression would be rated more favourably overall, and that clients would rate disclosing therapists more positively than therapists themselves would. S
- econd, that the type of disclosure would shape average and aspirational prototypicality differently: disclosing a current condition would signal “who we are now”, while disclosing recovery would signal “who we want to be”.
The design of Study 2 replicated Study 1 with two modifications. The sample comprised clients and the general adult population. Furthermore, the “professional experience” condition was replaced by a condition where the therapist disclosed recovered anxiety (a less relevant condition). This allowed a test of whether the benefits of recovery disclosure depend on its relevance to the client group. Key hypotheses examined whether sample type moderated the effect of disclosure on general perceptions, and whether a less relevant recovery disclosure would be less effective at signalling prototypicality.
Results
Study 1 comprised 141 practising therapists and 141 recent therapy clients. The therapist sample had a mean age of 41.50 years (SD=11.99) and was 70.2% women. The client sample had a mean age of 38.43 years (SD=10.47) and was 71.6% women. Both groups were predominantly White.
Study 2 included 135 general population adults and 128 clients. The general population sample had a mean age of 37.42 years (SD=10.65) and was 71.1% women. The client sample had a mean age of 35.44 years (SD=9.86) and was 65.6% women.
Contrary to hypotheses and some prior research, the type of therapist self-disclosure did not significantly affect participants’ general positive perceptions of the therapist, ratings of the therapist’s expertness, or expected prognosis for treatment. This finding was consistent across both studies and all participant groups.
However, disclosure content did powerfully influence how “prototypical” the therapist seemed to the therapy group.
Aspirational Prototypicality (“who we want to be”): Therapists disclosing recovered depression were rated significantly higher (Study 1: F (3,277) =15.10, p<.001, η²=.14; Study 2: F (3,257) =8.53, p<.001, η²=.09) than other groups. This effect was specific; disclosing recovered anxiety (less relevant) did not boost aspirational prototypicality as much.
Average Prototypicality (“who we are now”): Disclosing either current or recovered depression made therapists seem more like a typical group member compared to non-disclosure (Study 1: F (3,278) =49.03, p<.001, η²=.35).
Exploratory analyses revealed that aspirational prototypicality was strongly correlated with positive perceptions (β=.66), expertness (β=.75), and prognosis (β=.48), whereas average prototypicality showed weak or negative associations.
For participants who strongly identified as depressed, a therapist disclosing current depression was viewed more positively.
There were no differences in how the different disclosure types were rated across client, therapist, and general population samples, suggesting views on this type of disclosure may be broadly shared (though therapists did rate overall treatment prognosis somewhat more optimistically than clients did).
Conclusions
In conclusion, while therapist self-disclosure does not directly influence overall client evaluations, it plays a crucial role in shaping therapeutic leadership. Specifically, therapists who share recovered personal experience are better able to embody both “who we are” (average prototypicality) and “who we aspire to be” (aspirational prototypicality) within the group.
The authors point to previous work suggesting that group therapists are more effective when they are seen as aspirationally prototypical. Therefore, this study suggests that thoughtfully disclosing one’s own relevant recovery journey can serve as a powerful tool for therapists to model a path forward and strengthen the therapeutic group identity.
Strengths and limitations
This study builds on real-world context and integrates Identity Leadership Theory to construct a novel theoretical framework for self-disclosure. This framework explains why self-disclosure may be effective, thereby opening a new direction for subsequent research.
Furthermore, the experimental design demonstrated methodological rigour in variable measurement and statistical analysis. The study accounted for multiple confounding factors, including perceptual differences of therapist self-disclosure across various groups and the differential impacts of disclosure types on clients. Notably, it compared the effects of sharing recovery from a relevant mental health condition (e.g., depression in a depression group) versus a less relevant one (e.g., recovered anxiety), enhancing the practical applicability of the findings. The results offer more concrete guidance for real-world psychotherapy, suggesting that appropriately disclosing a relevant, recovered mental health experience can endow therapists with more pronounced aspirational and average prototypicality. This can bridge the distance between therapist and client, thereby facilitating the client’s recovery process.
However, limitations exist. Firstly, it employed a randomised experimental vignette experiment. The process of participants reading a scenario and imagining their reactions inherently differs from an authentic therapeutic encounter. Therefore, the extent to which these imagined responses represent real-world dynamics requires validation through subsequent research. Furthermore, it should be noted that there are marked differences between group psychotherapy and individual psychotherapy. Consequently, whether the experimental findings obtained in group psychotherapy can be generalised to individual psychotherapy remains a question that needs to be verified.
Secondly, participant selection criteria warrant further refinement. The broad inclusion criterion of having “received or provided mental health services within the last year” may have introduced noise into measures like depression symptoms, potentially affecting the accuracy of average prototypicality measurements and statistical results.
Thirdly, the cross-sectional design means the study cannot confirm whether prototypicality actually mediates the link between disclosure type and outcomes such as positive perceptions or expertness. The authors note that longitudinal research measuring prototypicality and outcomes at multiple time points would be needed to establish the direction of this relationship.
Finally, while the study briefly acknowledged at the outset that stigma concerns often stem from extreme case studies, it did not incorporate stigma as a potential negative outcome in its subsequent measurements and analyses. Given that self-disclosure did not significantly affect participants’ positive impressions of the therapist, it remains crucial to ascertain whether such disclosures might inadvertently cause stigma. Future research could build upon the existing measurements by incorporating scales specifically designed to assess stigmatising perceptions.
Implications for practice
Therapist lived experience disclosures may carry a risk of stigma, but this study suggests they can also do something useful: they can make the therapist look like a model of recovery. It is worth being clear about what was actually measured here. Nobody’s depression got better in this study. What changed was how a therapist was perceived after participants read a vignette, and whether they saw in that therapist a version of who they might become. However, determining how to tell our own stories and which aspects to share remains a delicate problem. In response to this question, the present research offers some answers by presenting participants with different scenarios.
First, should therapists engage in any degree of self-disclosure? The answer appears to be yes. Grounded in Identity Leadership Theory, the findings indicate that disclosing a recovered and relevant condition can significantly enhance a therapist’s aspirational and average prototypicality; serving both to demonstrate that recovery is possible and to convey an understanding of the client’s struggles.
Further, lived experience disclosures do not mean sharing one’s story indiscriminately. Disclosing recovery from the same or highly relevant condition (e.g., depression in a depression group) exerts the strongest positive effect on aspirational prototypicality. In contrast, disclosing recovery from a less relevant condition (e.g., anxiety in a depression group) or merely professional experience proves significantly less effective. Meanwhile, disclosing current struggles can strengthen a sense of shared current identity, but it does not enhance aspirational prototypicality, making this a choice that requires careful consideration. Therefore, sharing one’s recovery from a relevant mental health issue offers a unique dual benefit: it represents both an understanding of the client’s experience and an embodiment of the therapist’s envisioned future.
Finally, as someone who experienced mental health challenges during my own high school years and later served as a trainee mental health teacher in the same school setting, this research resonated with me deeply. When facing mental health struggles, hearing a therapist say, “I have been there too, and I made it through,” holds tremendous power. It transforms therapy from a process of “me helping you” into one of “us working together.” Of course, it is also important not to overstate the role of self-disclosure; after all, such disclosures did not significantly affect participants’ positive perceptions of the therapist, expertness of the therapist and expected prognosis for therapy.
In conclusion, this study underscores the positive role of therapist self-disclosure in shaping therapeutic leadership identity. It suggests that we can choose to share relevant experiences of mental health recovery to express understanding and empathy toward clients, while also helping to construct a more effective path to recovery.
Statement of Interests
Junxian Mao has no conflicts of interest to declare.
King’s MSc in Mental Health Studies
This blog has been written by a student on the Mental Health Studies MSc at King’s College London. A full list of blogs by King’s MSc students from can be found here.
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Edited by
Dr Dafni Katsampa.
Links
Primary Paper
Robertson, A. M., Cruwys, T., Stevens, M., & Platow, M. J. (2025). Leading by example: Experimental evidence that therapist lived experience disclosures can model the path to recovery for clients. British Journal of Psychology, 116, 409–431.
Other References
Barnett, J. E. (2011). Psychotherapist self-disclosure: Ethical and clinical considerations. Psychotherapy, 48(4), 315–321.
Conchar, C., & Repper, J. (2014). “Walking wounded or wounded healer?” Does personal experience of mental health problems help or hinder mental health practice? A review of the literature. Mental Health and Social Inclusion, 18(1), 35–44.
Haslam, S. A., Reicher, S. D., & Platow, M. J. (2020). The New Psychology of Leadership: Identity, Influence and Power (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Marino, C. “Khaki,” Child, B., & Campbell Krasinski, V. (2016). Sharing Experience Learned Firsthand (SELF): Self-Disclosure of Lived Experience in Mental Health Services and Supports. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, 39(2), 154–160.
Moody, K. J., Pomerantz, A. M., Ro, E., & Segrist, D. J. (2021). “Me too, a long time ago”: Therapist self-disclosure of past or present psychological problems similar to those of the client. Practice Innovations, 6(3), 181–188.
