Treatment success or failure? Using a narrative interview to supplement ROM

Area of Science:

• Psychotherapy Research
• Clinical Psychology
• Patient-Reported Outcomes

Background:

• Routine outcome monitoring (ROM) enhances therapy but may not align with client's lived experience.
• Discrepancies between ROM and client perception necessitate supplementary assessment methods.
• Narrative interviews and additional measures are proposed to bridge this gap.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine client-reported outcomes discordant with ROM measures.
• To explore the utility of qualitative posttreatment interviews in understanding client perspectives.
• To investigate discrepancies between objective ROM data and subjective client experience.

Main Methods:

• Qualitative analysis of a posttreatment interview.
• Case study methodology focusing on a single client's experience.
• Comparison of client's retrospective self-assessment with ROM data.

Main Results:

• The qualitative interview provided a unique narrative perspective supplementing ROM.
• ROM indicated client deterioration, while the client reported retrospective improvement.
• Client's subjective experience offered a richer understanding of treatment outcome.

Conclusions:

• Supplementing ROM with qualitative approaches offers a more holistic view of therapy outcomes.
• Client narratives are crucial for a comprehensive understanding of treatment effectiveness.
• Aggregated patient outcome data may mask complex individual experiences.