The Effect of Therapist Availability on the Frequency of Patient-Initiated Between-Session Contact.

Abstract

Does therapist availability affect the frequency of patient-initiated between-session phone contacts? There are few empirical data to inform therapists on this question: This study was designed to redress this literature gap. Results demonstrated that in general, therapists' availability policies did not strongly relate to patient-initiated contacts. However, there were some exceptions: The more willing therapists were to receive crisis intervention and mental status update calls, the fewer calls they received. Additionally, when therapists were less willing to be contacted between sessions, patients with personality disorders and/or poor global functioning tended to make more nonemergency calls to the therapist, whereas patients with elevated suicidality tended to make fewer nonemergency calls between sessions. The implications of the results on therapists' policies and patients' expectations are discussed.

Does time between application and case assignment predict therapy attendance or premature termination in outpatients?

“…We speculated that notification of case assignment made concrete and salient the expectation for help and relief, and this, coupled with increased self-efficacy from achieving a timely result, helped to account for the relationship between relatively quick case assignment and the greater likelihood of therapy attendance. Expectations of a positive resource may serve the same function as the resource itself (Aspinwall et al, 1999; Reitzel et al, 2004), and expectation that therapy would begin soon might also conform to this pattern. Other research supports the prompt assignment of a therapist is more important to patients than the actual date of the first contact (cf.…”

“…If a relationship between the timeliness of case assignment and attendance to therapy exists, perhaps it is attributable to the timely provision of hope that provides relief and motivates the patient to attend the intake session and remain in therapy. Previous research suggests that the expectation of a positive resource can serve as a stand-in for the resource itself (Aspinwall, Hill, & Reed, 1999; Reitzel, Burns, Repper, Wingate, & Joiner, 2004). We might expect patients to experience hope whether case assignment was timely or not; however, research suggests that those with greater symptom severity are less tolerant of assignment delay.…”