Key words: psychotherapy, effectiveness, adolescent, adolescent psychotherapy Q-Set
Research on effectiveness shows a widely accepted, significant and large effect of psychotherapy. Few published process studies exist for adolescents, due to complexity of the subject, and the absence of instruments sensitive enough to empirically capture its nuances.
Minotauro have developed a therapeutic model for adolescents, integrating psychoanalysis and developmental psychopathology. Specific interventions for antisocial behaviors, suicidal attempts, eating disorders, learning problems, interpersonal withdrawal, internet addiction have been deepened.
We used Adolescent Psychotherapy Q–Set, previously used to capture prototypical aspects of different treatments (psychoanalysis, psychodynamic psychotherapy, CBT, MBT) to describe this model. Using the APQ, 30 psychotherapists (M = 14 years of experience) from Minotauro were asked to rate their ‘actual’ practice with adolescents.
To study typical features of developmental psychotherapy we used descriptive statistics. To explore similarities between developmental psychotherapy and other approaches we used Spearman correlations. To investigate different therapist responses we used Q-Factor analysis.
Results showed that APQ is a meaningful tool for describing the adolescent psychotherapy process and for identifyng similarities between different therapeutic approaches. Limits and perspectives of the present study regarding instruments’ improvement (i.e. addictional items for APQ) and the need to link this methology to “real” clinical practice are also discussed.
