With increasing demand for psychotherapy services, clinicians are carrying increasingly large caseloads (Bailey et al., 2020). As the number of new intakes exceeds the number of clinical hours available each week in some settings, psychotherapy is delivered on an attenuated schedule for returning clients (rather than the traditional weekly frequency); there is, however, little support for the efficacy of this practice. The present study explored the effect of session frequency on psychotherapy outcomes using a quasi-randomized controlled design. In a working university counseling center, we assigned therapists to either a treatment-as-usual (TAU) group (attenuated session frequency) or an experimental group (weekly session frequency). Clients were randomly assigned to a therapist in either condition. Using hierarchical linear modeling and survival analyses, we examined psychotherapy outcomes (measured by session-by-session Outcome Questionnaire 45 scores) for 1,322 clients (3,919 individual sessions). We found no differences between groups when examining the full sample, but also found limited fidelity in the experimental group. When identifying individuals who were seen weekly in at least the first three sessions after intake (sensitivity analysis), we found the following: (a) weekly therapy resulted in faster trajectories of change over time, (b) weekly therapy resulted in a greater likelihood of achieving recovery, and (c) weekly therapy resulted in a greater likelihood of achieving recovery sooner. We discuss the importance of including session frequency when considering the dose of therapy, as well as the implication that prioritizing weekly therapy may increase therapy efficacy and efficiency in routine practice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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心理治疗会议频率：大学咨询中心的自然主义考试。

随着对心理治疗服务的需求不断增加，临床医生的工作量越来越大（Bailey 等人，2020 年）。由于在某些情况下，新入院的人数超过了每周可用的临床小时数，因此对回头客（而不是传统的每周频率）提供心理治疗的时间有所减少；然而，很少有人支持这种做法的有效性。本研究使用准随机对照设计探讨了会话频率对心理治疗结果的影响。在一个工作的大学咨询中心，我们将治疗师分配到照常治疗 (TAU) 组（减少会话频率）或实验组（每周会话频率）。在任何一种情况下，客户都被随机分配给治疗师。使用分层线性模型和生存分析，我们检查了 1,322 名客户（3,919 个单独会话）的心理治疗结果（通过会话结果问卷 45 分数测量）。在检查完整样本时，我们发现组间没有差异，但也发现实验组的保真度有限。在确定在摄入后至少前三个疗程中每周看到的个体时（敏感性分析），我们发现以下情况：（a）每周治疗导致随着时间的推移更快的变化轨迹，（b）每周治疗导致更大的可能性恢复，以及 (c) 每周治疗导致更快恢复的可能性更大。我们讨论了在考虑治疗剂量时包括会话频率的重要性，以及优先考虑每周治疗可能会提高常规实践中的治疗效果和效率的含义。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2022 APA，保留所有权利）。