Abstract:
Objective: Therapy drop-outs have extensive consequences, particularly for themselves, the other patients, the therapist and the hospital. In this study we examined, if it is possible to identify the patients prone to premature termination at an early stage.
Methods: Patients of the psychosomatic hospital in Rottenburg / Tübingen were reviewed retrospective in a case-control-study with “matched pairs”, which include gender, age and diagnosis. So we tried to find differences in the results of the questionnaires PHQ-D, IIP-D, SF-36 and SCl-90-R and the sociodemographic data.
Results: 59 drop-outs, 50 women and 9 men, were separated in 28 early and 31 late drop-outs, the cut-off date was the 13th day of treatment. The data was compared among the early, the late drop-outs and those who completed treatment regularly. The analysis of the questionnaires yielded little significant results. Compared to the late drop-outs early terminators had more often eating disorders, less children, less psychosomatic alongside diagnoses, lived more often with their parents, weren’t more often unemployed or in education and they were younger. Late drop-outs lived together with partner and /or children more often, they were more often employed and had more depressive disorders than the early drop-outs. The reason for termination of treatment in the early group were more often personal, in the late group rather internal (regarding the hospital).
Discussion: Because of the matched pairs it wasn’t possible to see differences in age, gender or diagnosis between drop-outs and those who terminated therapy regularly. After separating into early and late drop-outs some results appeared, that weren’t apparent in the complete collective. We think, that drop-out is caused by a variety of factors, which may be predicted with suitable questionnaires for the individual diagnosis. Standardized questionnaires for sociodemographic data and digital processing would be helpful for future studies.