The outcome quality of ambulant psychotherapy: findings from the primary health care in Switzerland
Abstract
This study investigated the outcome quality of outpatient psychotherapies in Switzerland’s primary health care. The sample analyzed encompassed 300 patients, the majority of whom had been treated with humanistic-experiential psychotherapy or psychodynamic psychotherapy. The most frequent axis I diagnoses were mood disorders or anxiety disorders; two-thirds of the patients had one or more comorbid disorders. Missing outcome values were handled by multiple imputation. The analysis of the pre–post differences revealed large significant effect sizes in the global measures “psychosocial functioning” and “symptom distress”. The results from this sample were compared with the results of published studies that tested the effectiveness of evidence-based cognitive-behavioral psychotherapies. The comparison revealed that the effectiveness of humanistic-experiential and psychodynamic treatment approaches was similar to the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral approaches.
Keywords: outcome quality, primary care, outpatient psychotherapy, pre–post comparison, multiple imputation
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