Structural change as a predictor of long-term follow-up outcome.
Based on data from psychoanalytic long-term psychotherapies, the predictive value of three measures of pre-post change for retrospective patient assessments of outcome at 1-year and 3-year follow-up was investigated. Pre-post changes were measured using the Global Severity Index (GSI), the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems (IIP) total score, and the Heidelberg Structural Change Scale (HSCS). In line with psychoanalytic theory, it was assumed that structural changes cause especially persistent changes and would, therefore, be most suitable to predict the follow-up criterion. This expectation was confirmed: Pre-post changes in GSI and IIP were only weakly associated with assessments at 1-year follow-up and not at all with assessments at 3-year follow-up. In contrast, correlations between changes in HSCS and outcome assessments were highly significant at both occasions.
Grande
Tilman
T
Department of Psychosomatic and General Clinical Medicine, University of Heidelberg, Germany. tilman_grande@med.uni-heidelberg.de
Dilg
Reiner
R
Jakobsen
Thorsten
T
Keller
Wolfram
W
Krawietz
Barbel
B
Langer
Monika
M
Oberbracht
Claudia
C
Stehle
Sabine
S
Stennes
Margret
M
Rudolf
Gerd
G
D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology*; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D016896:Treatment Outcome