Young adults in psychoanalytic psychotherapy: patient characteristics and therapy outcome

The aims of this naturalistic study are to present patient characteristics and analyse various outcome measures at termination for psychoanalytic psychotherapies with young adults. Patients (n = 134) between 18 and 25 years were included, of whom 92 received individual and 42 group therapy. One third had a self-reported personality disorder. The patients were considerably more troubled than Swedish norm groups at intake and they showed improvement on all outcome measures during therapy. However, the post therapy means did not fully reach the norm group means. The largest positive changes (pre- versus post-therapy) were with respect to the patients' overall health and functioning. Changes were more moderate in self-reported symptoms, self-concept, and self-representation, while changes in interpersonal problems and object representations were small. The results of this study are discussed in the context of advantages and disadvantages of naturalistic versus randomized controlled study designs.