Content and attainment of individual treatment goals in CBT

Abstract

This study examined the attainment of individual treatment goals as an approach to measure treatment outcomes retrospectively in comparison to standardized self-report measures. In total, 189 outpatients defined 1–3 treatment goals (N = 455) using the Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS) at the beginning of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and indicated the degree of their individual goal attainment post-treatment. The goals were assigned to content-related goal types of the Bern Inventory of Treatment Goals (BIT-T). The extent of goal attainment was, on average, between 1 (goal halfway attained) and 2 (goal attained) (M = 1.43), regardless of goal content and diagnostic group. Goals of the goal type “problems and symptoms” were chosen most frequently and showed significantly higher goal attainment than “interpersonal” goals, thereby indicating that outpatients in CBT mainly want to work on treatment goals like coping with problems and symptoms. Additionally, standardized self-report measures (Brief Symptom Inventory, Beck Depression Inventory-II) were assessed, and associations with the GAS were calculated. They correlated significantly but moderately, thus indicating that the two concepts complement each other and should ideally be implemented together.

Keywords:

• cognitive behavior therapy
• outcome research

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 To assign the mental diagnoses the German version of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-4 (Wittchen et al., 1997) was used, which at the time has been the gold standard for research and practice in Germany. In a study by Zanarini et al. (2000), interrater reliability ranged from excellent to fair-good, with slightly lower test-retest reliability measures.

2 Sessions are mostly conducted weekly at the rate of 50 min. After a first interview, two to four preparatory sessions are conducted before either a short-term (up to 24 sessions) or a long-term (45 up to 80 sessions) psychotherapy is covered by general health care. Both individual and group therapy or a combination can be requested. German Guidelines require state accredited therapists and therapy proceedings have to be rooted in strong empirical evidence.