Social Work Commons^™

Attrition And Psychotherapy, Jesse Barrington Homan

Dissertations and Theses

Attrition in psychotherapy, also known as dropout, is a problem that affects clients who terminate, their families, therapists, mental health systems, and the overall community. Research on attrition is vast. However, the majority of this research has been done post hoc, relied on quantitative methods, and looked primarily at client demographic variables as the predictors of attrition. This has resulted in inconsistent findings, offers little to no useful information about attrition, and appears to blame clients for failed therapy. There has been little research on attrition from the perspective of clients who terminate. This study was designed to answer the …