Client initiated termination of therapy at NHS primary care counselling services

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to provide estimated benchmarks for unplanned endings for primary care counselling services using data drawn from the CORE National Research Database. Due to the problem of missing data, benchmarks are provided for ‘declared’ therapy endings and ‘estimated’ therapy endings. ‘Declared’ therapy endings are where the practitioner has provided data; ‘estimated’ therapy endings take into account missing data where clients are more likely to have had an unplanned rather than a planned ending to therapy. The average ‘declared’ rate of unplanned endings was calculated at 32% with a high rate determined as 40% or higher and a low rate as 21% or lower. The average ‘estimated’ rate of unplanned endings was calculated at 50% with a high rate determined as 58% or higher and a low rate as 38% or lower. It is likely that the true average, high and low rates of unplanned endings fall between the two sets of figures.

Keywords:

• Termination
• attrition
• dropouts
• counselling
• primary care

This work was supported by funding from the Artemis Trust and also from the Research and Development Priorities & Needs Levy via Leeds Mental Health Teaching NHS Trust. We are also indebted to the primary care counselling services who donated their data to The CORE National Research Database for Primary care Psychological Therapy and Counselling Services. We also thank Alex Curtis-Jenkins at CORE IMS for his technical input into the data collection process.