title: Empirically and clinically useful decision making in psychotherapy: differential predictions with treatment response models.
abstract: In the delivery of clinical services, outcomes monitoring (i.e., repeated assessments of a patient's response to treatment) can be used to support clinical decision making (i.e., recurrent revisions of outcome expectations on the basis of that response). Outcomes monitoring can be particularly useful in the context of established practice research networks. This article presents a strategy to disaggregate patients into homogeneous subgroups to generate optimal expected treatment response profiles, which can be used to predict and track the progress of patients in different treatment modalities. The study was based on data from 618 diagnostically diverse patients treated with either a cognitive-behavioral treatment protocol (n = 262) or an integrative cognitive-behavioral and interpersonal treatment protocol (n = 356). The validity of expected treatment response models to predict treatment in those 2 protocols for individual patients was evaluated. The ways such a procedure might be used in outpatient centers to learn more about patients, predict treatment response, and improve clinical practice are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Berne, Switzerland. wolfgang.lutz@psy.unibe.ch
authors.forename: Wolfgang
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Lutz
authors.forename: Stephen M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Saunders
authors.forename: Scott C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Leon
authors.forename: Zoran
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Martinovich
authors.forename: Joachim
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kosfelder
authors.forename: Dietmar
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Schulte
authors.forename: Klaus
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Grawe
authors.forename: Sven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tholen
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002983:Clinical Competence; D015928:Cognitive Behavioral Therapy / Q000379:methods; D003657:Decision Making; D036262:Empirical Research; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D019964:Mood Disorders / Q000628:therapy; D011379:Prognosis; D011584:Psychology / Q000379:methods*; D011613:Psychotherapy / Q000379:methods*; D016896:Treatment Outcome