[Psychotherapy Inpatients With Illusory Mental Health - An Explorative Approach]

There is no systematic knowledge about patients in psychotherapy, who score in the healthy range of symptom-related self-report questionnaires, and thus are termed patients with illusory mental health. 4088 psychotherapy inpatients were exploratively analysed with regard to their frequency, their impairment as judged by the therapists, and clinical indicators for deficits in personality structure. About 14% of the entire sample classified themselves as mentally healthy by means of the GSI of the SCL-90-R. In contrast, therapists rated only 6% as clini-cally unimpaired, and the agreement between patients and therapists was low (κ=0,12). The personality structure of patients with illusory mental health was only moderately compro-mised. Our findings do not allow any clear conclusions about possible explanations of illusory mental health. Rather, these patients seem to represent a very heterogenous group.