[Which factors modify the duration of inpatient psychotherapy?]

The indication for differential duration of inpatient psychotherapy is a difficult question to answer, especially when the possible outcome-success of more severely disturbed patients (e.g. with borderline-personality disorder) is considered. Our own results showed no relevant correlation between the degree of patients' disturbance and treatment duration, neither any relevant correlation between treatment duration and therapists' evaluation of symptomatic or ego-structural improvement. The only marked effect on treatment duration was found for the patients' evaluation of their therapeutic relationship: the better they judged this relationship, the more their therapists tended to elongate inpatient psychotherapy. This finding supports a paradigm, which has been already well confirmed for outpatient psychotherapy: the specific importance of the therapeutic relationship for the therapeutic process even within the scope of inpatient psychotherapy. Another finding of our study indicates that more severely disturbed patients probably need a modified setting of inpatient psychotherapy: favorably a focus oriented interval treatment with short duration periods and alternating focus if necessary.