Effects of providing domain specific progress monitoring and feedback to therapists and patients on outcome

OBJECTIVE: Progress monitoring and feedback reduces the number of patients deteriorating in psychotherapy. The current study examined the effects of providing treatment progress information to therapists and patients using individual feedback of both wellbeing and affective psychological distress compared to feedback of wellbeing alone. METHOD: The sample comprised 845 consecutive psychiatric day-hospital admissions using a historical cohort design. The effects of monitoring and feedback of wellbeing in Cohort 1 were compared against the effects of monitoring and feedback of both wellbeing and affective psychological distress in Cohort 2. RESULTS: Patients who were "not-on-track" in Cohort 2 demonstrated significantly greater improvement for affective psychological distress than those from Cohort 1. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that providing feedback from multiple sources enhances patient outcomes in comparison to single source feedback.