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Outcome in Psychotherapy Evaluated by Independent Judges

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Sidney Bloch
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, The Warneford Hospital, Oxford OX3 7JX
Gary Bond
Affiliation:
Department of Behavioural Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Brandon Qualls
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island
Irvin Yalom
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Stanford University, Stanford, California
Erik Zimmerman
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

Abstract

To overcome common limitations in assessing the outcome of psychotherapy, the following method was used: independent assessment by teams of experienced psychotherapists; individualized measures of outcome; and videotaped clinical interviews to allow the judges to rate, at one sitting, a patient's clinical state before and after eight months of therapy. Agreement between the judges' ratings was low both for the severity of the clinical state and for its outcome. Possible reasons for this low agreement are discussed.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1977 

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