[Psychotherapy and gender: do men and women require different treatments? ]

Research has demonstrated that men and women differ considerably on a wide variety of variables. However, the effect of gender on the psychotherapy experience is little understood. This article provides a brief review of the current research literature on gender effects in psychotherapy and reports findings of gender differences in outcome for two different treatment modalities. Literature was collected using Medline and PsycLit search engines. Results from a randomized trial on supportive and interpretive short-term individual psychotherapy were used to investigate interaction effects between patient gender and form of treatment in 88 female and 56 male patients. Gender of the patient, therapist, or their interaction has minimal impact on treatment outcome. However, when gender is compared with the form of therapy, the success of the therapy differs between men and women. The findings suggest that for research on gender effects in psychotherapy to be productive, investigators need to consider how gender interacts with other conceptually meaningful variables.