Multiple impact family treatment (MIT): Long-term evaluation by means of tailored target criteria (TTC)

Abstract

This is the second article in a series on multiple impact family treatment (MIT), which describes a 4-year MIT project including 13 families from child and youth psychiatry. The first article described the subjects by means of the DSM-III-R, the Health-Sickness Rating Scale, and background information, compared them with a review of Scandinavian longitudinal studies on similar patients, and used HSRS, a global measure, as a follow-up instrument at 2 years. The present article describes the immediate results and the follow-up results at 2 and 9 years after treatment, using tailored target complaints (TTC). Developed as a measure of symptom change, TTC are described by theoretical background as well as by content and structure. Patients were scored for change on their presenting complaints rather than for general mental health or psychosocial competence. Interrater reliability was high for the 53 individual subcriteria (0.83), even though raters had had no training on the instrument. TTC is thus simple to use. TTC showed that the substantial and meaningful changes immediately after MIT remained significantly so at both follow-ups, up to 9 years after treatment. Symptomatic change as measured by TTC is analysed and compared with a more global measure of mental health, HSRS. The measures correlate well (0.80).

□ Multiple impact family treatment, Tailored target criteria.