Premium
Trajectories of depression in psychotherapy: How client characteristics predict clinical improvement
Author(s) -
Lin Tao,
Farber Barry A.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.124
H-Index - 119
eISSN - 1097-4679
pISSN - 0021-9762
DOI - 10.1002/jclp.23119
Subject(s) - depression (economics) , psychology , psychotherapist , clinical psychology , identification (biology) , psychiatry , botany , macroeconomics , economics , biology
Abstract Objective The current study aims to ascertain the trajectories of psychotherapy clients’ symptom change and identify client factors that predict treatment outcome. Method We conducted a latent growth mixture model (LGMM) to identify the change trajectories of 44 clients’ depression scores during psychotherapy. Client characteristics were then explored to determine whether any were associated with change trajectories. We examined whether the number of physician visits and/or client self‐concealment scores predict 63 clients’ improvement after controlling for initial symptom severity. Results Two trajectories of clients’ symptom change were identified: nonimprovers (52.3%) and improvers (47.7%). Nonimprovers had higher levels of self‐concealment and baseline depression than improvers. The number of physician visits was associated with higher depression scores at baseline and greater clinical improvement during psychotherapy. Conclusion Clients showed distinct trajectories of symptom change in psychotherapy. Early identification of clients at risk for treatment failure may increase the probability of therapeutic success.