Patient characteristics in psychoanalytic outpatient centers and private practices

摘要

It is often assumed that patients of psychoanalytic outpatient centers differ from those of private psychoanalytic practices: outpatients are assumed to be more severely burdened, more frequently impaired in personality organization, less educated and less socially integrated. In the practice study of the German Psychoanalytic Society (DPG-Practice-Study), basic documentation data of 5908 patients were collected in 11 psychoanalytic outpatient centers and in cooperating private psychoanalytic practices. In this article, these patients are described on the basis of sociodemographic and clinically relevant measures, and the two groups are compared. It is shown that the patients in both groups were strongly impaired and in need of treatment; however, there were no substantial differences between patients of psychoanalytic outpatient centers and those of private practices. Therefore, the described assumptions concerning patients of psychoanalytic outpatient centers cannot be confirmed.