1. Is There an Evidence-Based Number of Sessions in Outpatient Psychotherapy? - A Comparison of Naturalistic Conditions across Countries
- Author
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Jaime Delgadillo, Christoph Flückiger, Andreea Vîslă, Bruce E. Wampold, Julian A. Rubel, Wolfgang Lutz, University of Zurich, and Flückiger, Christoph
- Subjects
Cross-Cultural Comparison ,Psychotherapist ,Evidence-based practice ,10093 Institute of Psychology ,Mental Disorders ,3203 Clinical Psychology ,MEDLINE ,IFP News Section ,General Medicine ,3202 Applied Psychology ,Outpatient psychotherapy ,Psychotherapy ,2738 Psychiatry and Mental Health ,Psychiatry and Mental health ,Clinical Psychology ,Treatment Outcome ,Cost Savings ,Evidence-Based Practice ,Outpatients ,Ambulatory Care ,Humans ,150 Psychology ,Psychology ,Applied Psychology - Abstract
Deciding on the number of psychotherapy sessions to satisfactorily treat a patient is a vital clinical as well as economic issue in most mental health systems worldwide. The length of outpatient psychotherapy in naturalistic conditions ranges from a single session to hundreds of sessions [1]. In randomized clinical trials, the number of sessions is typically fixed to deliver manualized treatments and to control for dosage effects (e.g., in a 16-session format [2]). Using data from Routine Outcome Monitoring studies [3, 4], we investigated whether the treatments under naturalistic conditions were fixed to a particular number of sessions or not (H1), whether naturalistic conditions tended to include unusually long treatments (e.g., >100 sessions) (H2), and how the observed number of sessions was distributed across countries (H3).
- Published
- 2020