Sixty percent of private practice dynamically oriented psychotherapy clients felt that their therapy either lasted too long or ended too soon, according to recent research conducted by Prof. David Roe, Head of the Department of Community Mental Health, Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Sciences at the University of Haifa.
“While there is widespread agreement that an ideal termination of psychotherapy occurs naturally, with an agreement of the timing between therapist and client, our research reveals that more often than not – this does not happen” said Prof. Roe.
In the study, which was conducted in collaboration with Dr. Rachel Dekel and Galit Harel from Bar Ilan University and Prof. Shmuel Fennig of Tel Aviv University Medical School, 82 people who were in private practice psychodynamically oriented psychotherapy for at least 6 months (and average of 2 years), which had recently ended, were assessed regarding the way they experienced the timing of, reasons for and feelings about their psychotherapy termination.
The findings, which were recently published in three prestigious psychotherapy journals: “Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic”; “The Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis & Dynamic Psychiatry” and “Psychology and psychotherapy: Theory, research and practice”, revealed that 84% of participants stated that they initiated the termination; the remaining 16% stated that termination was either by mutual agreement or initiated by the therapists.
The results of the study show that only 40% of the clients felt that the therapy ended at the appropriate time, 37% felt that it ended earlier than it should have and 23% felt that the therapy went on for too long.
The most frequent reasons for termination among those who experienced it as too early were financial constrains (34.5%) and mismatch with therapist (27.6%). Among those clients who experienced therapy as lasting too long, the most frequent reasons were: feeling uncomfortable toward the therapist (26.3%), hope that the treatment would improve (21.1%) and dependence on the therapist (21.1%).