Preventing therapy dropout in the real world: The clinical utility of videotape preparation and client estimate of treatment duration.

Abstract

Practicing clinicians realize that patients' dropping out of therapy is detrimental to treatment outcome and can prove costly to psychotherapists in terms of financial and personal consequences. Two procedures to prevent therapy dropout were tested in the "real-world," naturalistic environment of a health maintenance organization (HMO). Whereas video preparation significantly reduced dropout, opportunity to estimate treatment duration did not. Results were obtained from 125 randomly assigned adult outpatients. Findings suggest that psychologists in clinical and administrative positions may experience reduced dropout rates by providing new patients with videotaped instructional material about what they might expect in the psychotherapy process.

Diffusion of treatment research: does open access matter?

“…The article used was ''Preventing Therapy Dropout in the Real World: The Clinical Utility of Videotape Preparation and Client Estimate of Treatment Duration,'' by Reis and Brown (2006). The article was chosen because it had clear recommendations for improving practice and was likely more relevant and accessible to participants than was the article used in Study 1.…”

“…Overall, the most popular intervention that participants said they would try in the next 6 months was to ''have each client & therapist mutually agree on a treatment duration estimate during the intake session,'' which was endorsed by 30% of participants, and did not vary significantly by condition. Note that this intervention was tested, but not supported, by Reis and Brown (2006).…”

“…Five of the seven items were found to reliably distinguish between those who had read the article and those who had not, so these items were retained for the final version of the test used in the main study. The test questions and answers were then sent to Brenda Reis, the first author of the Reis and Brown (2006) article. She confirmed the validity of the questions and answers, and made some minor suggestions for improvement, which were implemented.…”

Impact of Clinician Expectations on Termination Status and Therapeutic Outcome

“…Dew & Bickman, 2005;Callahan et al, 2009;Hardin, Subich, & Holvey, 1988;Nock & Kazdin, 2001;Reis & Brown, 2006;Walitzer, Dermen, & Conners, 1999). Outcome expectations refer to clients' pretreatment beliefs regarding the effectiveness of treatment.…”

“…Premature termination is a pervasive problem in the field of psychotherapy (Garfield, 1994;Reis & Brown, 2006). The prevalence of premature termination in mental health and private practice settings is extensively reported in the historical literature as falling between 40% and 60% (e.g.…”