Therapist adherence has been shown to contribute to the effectiveness of treatment interventions. The role in a patient's decision to drop out of treatment, however, is unknown. This study investigates whether therapist adherence affects clinical outcome and the risk for dropout. Patients diagnosed with panic disorder with agoraphobia (N = 265) were treated in one of two CBT variations: with (T+) and without (T-) explicit therapist-guided exposure. Significant associations between lower levels of adherence and symptomatic improvement were observed in treatment completers in the T-condition and dropouts in T+ condition suggesting that adherence-outcome relations are potentially contributed by patient and treatment characteristics. Moreover, our results propose that patient related difficulties with exposure procedures may lead to lower adherence and dropout.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.