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Predicting Termination Conditions in Individual Psychotherapy from Patients’ Variables

Ta-Ho Yang, Ph.D.1*, Shuh-Ren Jin, Ph.D.

Objectives: We intended to explore the percentages and session times of psychotherapy for completers, informed dropouts, and non-informed dropouts, and to analyze the differences of clinical variables among those groups, and in an attempt to fi nd effective predictors. Methods: The study data were based on fi ve-year process note archives of short-term individual psychotherapy at a specialty psychiatric hospital. We did analysis of variance and multi-nominal logistic regression to analyze 16 clinical variables of 97 adult patients. Results: The percentages of completers, informed dropouts, and non-informed dropouts were 34%, 36.1%, and 29.9%, respectively, of the sample population. Those percentages are not signifi - cantly different in three groups. Their average times of attended sessions were 13.12, 6.69, and 6.31 times among those three groups, showing signifi cant difference (F = 66.3, df = 2, 94, p < 0.001). The factor of sex (χ2 = 9.55, p < 0.01), age (F = 3.99, df = 2, 92, p < 0.05), and past psychotherapy experience (PPE) (χ2 = 9.60, df = 2, p < 0.01) could effectively discriminate three patients groups, with a total correct prediction rate of 55.8%. PPE was the most signifi cant predictors among three predictors, but it could not effectively discriminate between completers and informed dropouts. Conclusion: Being young, male and without PPE were risk factors for non-informed dropout. Future studies are encouraged to set up longitudinal and detailed psychotherapy archives to further explore different features of dropout subgroups.
Key Word drop out, termination style, prior notice, clinical variables
Editorial Committe, Taiwanese Journal of Psychiatry
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