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. 2015 Aug;207(2):115-22.
doi: 10.1192/bjp.bp.114.145565. Epub 2015 May 7.

Duration of psychological therapy: relation to recovery and improvement rates in UK routine practice. [corrected]

William B Stiles  1 , Michael Barkham  2 , Sue Wheeler  2
Affiliations

Duration of psychological therapy: relation to recovery and improvement rates in UK routine practice. [corrected]

William B Stiles et al. Br J Psychiatry. 2015 Aug.

Erratum in

  • Correction.
    [No authors listed] [No authors listed] Br J Psychiatry. 2015 Sep;207(3):273. doi: 10.1192/bjp.207.3.273. Br J Psychiatry. 2015. PMID: 26329576 No abstract available.

Abstract

Background: Previous studies have reported similar recovery and improvement rates regardless of treatment duration among patients receiving National Health Service (NHS) primary care mental health psychological therapy.

Aims: To investigate whether this pattern would replicate and extend to other service sectors, including secondary care, university counselling, voluntary sector and workplace counselling.

Method: We compared treatment duration with degree of improvement measured by the Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation - Outcome Measure (CORE-OM) for 26 430 adult patients who scored above the clinical cut-off point at the start of treatment, attended 40 or fewer sessions and had planned endings.

Results: Mean CORE-OM scores improved substantially (pre-post effect size 1.89); 60% of patients achieved reliable and clinically significant improvement (RCSI). Rates of RCSI and reliable improvement and mean pre- and post-treatment changes were similar at all tested treatment durations. Patients seen in different service sectors showed modest variations around this pattern.

Conclusions: Results were consistent with the responsive regulation model, which suggests that in routine care participants tend to end therapy when gains reach a good-enough level.

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