Am J Psychiatry 1980; 137:87-90
Copyright © 1980 by American Psychiatric Association
Therapists' recognition of psychopathology: a model for quality review of psychotherapy
F Kass, A Skodol, P Buckley and E Charles
In this study 32 randomly selected psychiatric emergency room patients, who
were in concurrent psychotherapy, completed the SCL-90 and a clinically
oriented questionnaire. Their therapists independently rated the patients'
degree of psychopathology on the nine SCL-90 symptom scales. Therapists
were highly efficient in recognizing depression (94% of the cases) and
anxiety (89%) but not psychotic (35%) and obsessive- complusive (16%)
pathology. Variables significantly associated with the therapists'
nonrecognition of psychopathology were the diagnosis of borderline, the
patient's expression of inadequacy in comparison to the therapist, the
patient's fear of offending the therapist, and the patient wanting but not
receiving empathy from the therapist. The authors discuss the implications
of these findings for peer review and further research.
