The effects of providing therapists with feedback on patient progress during psychotherapy: Are outcomes enhanced?

Patient-focused research attempts to provide information that answers the q uestion: Is this treatment benefiting this patient? Although several system s have been developed to monitor and provide feedback about a patient's res ponse to psychotherapy? few if any have been tested empirically. The curren t study divided 609 patients into four groups (two experimental and two con trol) to determine if feedback regarding patient progress, when provided to a therapist, affected patient outcome and number of sessions attended. Res ults showed that feedback increased the duration of treatment and improved outcome relative to patients in the control condition who were predicted to be treatment failures. Tn;ice as many patients in the feedback group achie ved clinically significant or reliable change and one-third as many were cl assified as deteriorated by the time treatment ended. For those patients wh o were predicted to have a positive response to treatment. feedback to ther apists resulted in a reduction in the number of treatment sessions without reducing positive outcomes.