Individual Psychotherapy and Persons With Serious Mental Illness: The Clients' Perspective

The perspectives of persons with serious mental illness about their experiences with individual psychotherapy were obtained from a stratified random sample of 12 psychosocial rehabilitation centers from all centers in Maryland. Response and completion rates, test-retest reliability, and generalization data were positive. Eight areas were explored: (1) Utilization and duration: of the 212 respondents, 90 percent had been in therapy for a median of 12 months (mean = 3 years); only a third expected to end their therapy within 5 years. (2) Therapeutic effectiveness: most of the respondents (72%) reported that individual psychotherapy had brought positive changes to their lives, 14 percent reported negative changes, and 14 percent reported that therapy had had no effect. (3) Preferred interventions and parameters: sixteen percent felt that medication was most useful, 25 percent felt that talking therapy was most useful, and 60 percent endorsed a combination of the two. With respect to diagnosis and psychotherapy, 84 percent of respondents with schizophrenia preferred brief, less frequent sessions of reality-oriented therapy over longer, more frequent sessions of insight therapy. Respondents with bipolar and major depression were equally split between the two. (4) Therapeutic issues: human concerns were more frequently rated as important and were rated higher in importance than illness-specific symptoms. (5) Clients' view of illness: Only 8 percent thought their illness was a brain disease, a third thought it was a psychological problem, and a quarter thought it was a combination of both; a third answered, open quote I don't know closed quote. Almost half did not know what their therapists thought. (6) Therapeutic relationship: Friendliness was the quality most desired in a therapist. (7) Confidentiality: Most felt that therapists generally kept the clients' confidences. (8) Empowerment: Persons who felt empowered in therapy spent less time in hospitals, expected a shorter stay in therapy, and knew more about their problems. Suggestions are made about a more client-responsive model of individual psychotherapy for persons with serious mental illness.