Therapy Outcomes in a Multidisciplinary Training Clinic

Patient-focused research has been offered as one means of bridging the gap between clinical practice and research in psychology. Tracking individual progress within a course of psychotherapy via process monitoring measures represents one type of patient-focused research. In this study, the Outcome Questionnaire-45 was used as a process measure to monitor client progress within a university-affiliated multidisciplinary training clinic. The survival analysis sample was comprised of 264 adult psychotherapy clients, of which 47.4% were male and 69.4% were Caucasian. After accounting for outliers, time-to-event analysis indicated that 14 sessions were needed for 50% of clients to achieve reliable change and 25 sessions were needed for 50% of clients to achieve clinically significant change. While 47.4% (n = 125) were classified as unchanged during a course of psychotherapy, 26.5% (n = 70) were recovered and an additional 9.5% (n = 25) were reliably improved. Results are compared with other available research involving process monitoring measures; implications for future research and limitations are also discussed