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The BIOMED II project, ‘Improving Psychiatric Treatment in Residential Programmes for Newly Dependent Groups through Relapse Prevention’, provided a large database of characteristics of men and women in European therapeutic communities (TCs). One of the aims of the project was to improve the treatment of ‘emerging dependency groups’ through better assessment. Although American TC research has shown that there are important differences between men and women that should be taken into account when organising treatment, the BIOMED project failed to report on gender differences. This article tries to fill this gap by presenting an overview of the gender differences in the TC clients and lists the characteristics of the participating European TCs. The two overviews are given for each country separately. Descriptive methods were used. The authors discuss whether the TC programme considers the differences between men and women and whether the ‘community as method’ approach is gender sensitive.

This article addresses the issue of how documentation can become a regular and competence-raising activity in treatment settings. A documentation system in Sweden (the DOC system) is used as an illustrative example. Two propositions are put forward and discussed: it is important that (1) the documentation be in accordance with the interests of the practitioners, and (2) that the documentation be used for self-evaluation, in order to enhance the practitioners’ competence. Based on experiences using the DOC system, some general observations about how to implement the forms and self-evaluation are presented. Finally, some research prospects are outlined.