Improvement and amount of therapeutic contact: An alternative to the use of no-treatment controls in psychotherapy.

Abstract

The present study specified that patients having fewer and briefer sessions of psychotherapy will show significantly less improvement than patients with more and longer sessions, over the same period of time. Fifty-four psychiatric patients were assigned at random to three psychiatrists, each of whom treated an equal number of patients in group therapy and two different forms of individual therapy. In one of these latter forms, the patients were able to have only one-half as many psychotherapy sessions and the sessions lasted. only one-half as long as patients treated in the other two forms. Over a six-month experimental period the patients with restricted therapeutic contacts showed less improvement on the criterion of change used. The significance of amount of therapeutic contacts is discussed.