An Investigation of Clinically Significant Change Among Clients of a Doctoral Psychology Training Clinic

• Main Author: Prout, Kerry Kathleen
• Format: Others
• Published: DigitalCommons@USU 2013
• Subjects: Clinically-significant change; Community mental health outcomes; Factors associated with clinically significant change; Psychology training clinics; Psychotherapy outcomes; Psychology
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/1979; https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2985&context=etd

The current study sought to examine client outcome data for clients seen for outpatient psychotherapy services by graduate-level student therapists in doctoral psychology training clinics in order to better understand the change process occurring in such settings and to examine whether services being offered are meaningful for clients. One hundred ninety-nine clients seen by graduate-level therapists at a training clinic setting were assessed on a session-by-session basis using the Outcome Questionnaire-45 in order to identify the percentage of clients who met criteria for clinically significant change, reliable improvement, no change, or deterioration in outcomes across the course of treatment. Approximately 28% of clients seen for treatment met criteria for clinically significant change at the termination of treatment and 23% reliably improved. Survival analysis indicated that the median time required to attain clinically significant change was six sessions. Current findings are compared to earlier investigations in both training and nontraining settings. The implications of these findings for education and training, client care and clinical services, and policy are discussed.