A pilot study of psychotherapeutic treatment histories of patients suffering from anxiety disorders
Daniele Piacentini, Daniela Leveni, Gabriele Catania
Aim: Authoritative guidelines recommend cognitive-behavioural psychotherapy as the treatment of fi rst
choice for the principal anxiety disorders; in any case the principals which discipline Informed Consent
envisage that patients are informed about the alternatives available, the characteristics and the
effectiveness of the treatments proposed before a given treatment is started. This study examines the
characteristics of previous psychotherapies received by patients apparently refractory to the treatment
and suffering from panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, generalised anxiety disorder and
social phobia.
Method: The study involved 69 patients from two public mental health centres who remembered
having been subjected to psychotherapy previously and were apparently refractory to the treatment.
A questionnaire was administered to these patients concerning the type and contents of the previous
treatments and the answers given to the various items were analysed.
Results: Only 23,2% of the patients remembered having received cognitive-behavioural therapy; more
than 49% did not know what type of therapy they had received, because they had not been informed.
By analysing the contents of the therapy it was found that only 18,8% of the patients who had been
referred to cognitive-behavioural therapy had actually received a therapy consistent with the minimum
criteria required to identify the therapy followed as behavioural or cognitive-behavioural.
Conclusions: The data emerging from the study suggest that only a minimum percentage of patients
were referred to psychotherapy treatment consistent with the guideline recommendations and the
principles of Informed Consent. Even the patients referred to an apparently adequate treatment in
the majority of cases did not receive a therapy with contents which refl ected the minimum criteria
enabling such therapy to be considered adequate.
Keywords
Treatment history, cognitive-behavioural therapy, treatment guidelines, evidencebased.
treatment.
