Introduction: the efficacy in psychotherapy is still difficult to determine, because it is impossible to give an objective measure of the complexity of people’s growth. However it is important to try and provide scientific data in this field. We present a retrospective study to evaluate the efficacy of the Autogenic Therapy (AT) in a large cohort of patients. Materials and methods: We evaluated the results of AT on 2988 patients that began the 4-Steps AT “Gastaldo-Ottobre”. These patients were evaluated clinically and through a battery of various tests (subjective improvement, anxiety- depression, symptoms list, anamnestic history) before and at various steps of the entire psychotherapy. In this study we focused our analysis only on three areas: subjective improvement, anxiety and depression evaluation. Results: at all Steps patients showed significant improvements, both through subjective and objective measures. After the first Step 75.6% of patients declared an improvement, 20.3% no changes, 4.1% worsened. The objective measures gave a statistically significant reduction of the average value of anxiety (from 8.4 to 7.6) and depression (from 45.77 to 39.65), (p<0.01). The number of people that proceed with the further Steps is lower, but the results are still highly encouraging with a similar trend with statistical significance. Conclusions: The overall results are extremely interesting: they confirm in a high number of patients the possibility of objective evaluation of the efficacy of Psychotherapy and give a measurement in particular of the efficacy of the AT, already since the first Step of treatment (Somatic Autogenic Training).
The efficacy of Autogenic Therapy: a retrospective population study on 2988 patients
DA RONCH, Chiara;GASTALDO, Ernesto;NANNI, Maria Giulia;GRASSI, Luigi;
2010
Abstract
Introduction: the efficacy in psychotherapy is still difficult to determine, because it is impossible to give an objective measure of the complexity of people’s growth. However it is important to try and provide scientific data in this field. We present a retrospective study to evaluate the efficacy of the Autogenic Therapy (AT) in a large cohort of patients. Materials and methods: We evaluated the results of AT on 2988 patients that began the 4-Steps AT “Gastaldo-Ottobre”. These patients were evaluated clinically and through a battery of various tests (subjective improvement, anxiety- depression, symptoms list, anamnestic history) before and at various steps of the entire psychotherapy. In this study we focused our analysis only on three areas: subjective improvement, anxiety and depression evaluation. Results: at all Steps patients showed significant improvements, both through subjective and objective measures. After the first Step 75.6% of patients declared an improvement, 20.3% no changes, 4.1% worsened. The objective measures gave a statistically significant reduction of the average value of anxiety (from 8.4 to 7.6) and depression (from 45.77 to 39.65), (p<0.01). The number of people that proceed with the further Steps is lower, but the results are still highly encouraging with a similar trend with statistical significance. Conclusions: The overall results are extremely interesting: they confirm in a high number of patients the possibility of objective evaluation of the efficacy of Psychotherapy and give a measurement in particular of the efficacy of the AT, already since the first Step of treatment (Somatic Autogenic Training).I documenti in SFERA sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
