Short- and Long-term Group Psychotherapy

A primary goal of this study is to investigate the significance of treatment duration, by comparing change after group psychotherapy of varying lengths. A secondary goal is to investigate the predictive value of selected patient variables on outcome: personality pathology, quality of object relations, presence of personality disorder, degree of initial disturbance, and education. One hundred and twenty patients from 5-6 different study sites (consisting of one coordinator and 3 therapists) will be included. Exclusion criteria are psychosis, substance abuse, and organically based symptoms. Patients are interviewed before treatment and one year after termination, and self-rated outcome measures are filled in at 3-month intervals during treatment and at termination. After an initial evaluation, patients are randomized to one of two manualized psychodynamic group psychotherapies with different treatment lengths (20 and 80 sessions). Each therapist will conduct both a short- and a long-term group, and sessions are taped in order to check treatment integrity.