Adult and Child Client Differences in Therapy Dropout Research

In spite of the high dropout rate from child and family therapy, few studies have investigated the premature termination of treatment of children. We argue that, due to decision-making and motivational differences of children and adults in psychotherapy, different variables would relate to treatment continuance for the two groups. We investigated the relationship of demographic, therapist, and treatment variables to premature termination for both children (n = 212) and adults (n = 118) in outpatient therapy. Multiple-regression analysis revealed that therapist experience and referral source predicted adult continuance, but none of the variables investigated related to child treatment continuance. We conclude that data from children and adults should be analyzed separately in dropout research, that more research should be devoted to the study of the continuance of children in treatment, and that parent variables influencing continuance of their children's treatment should be identified.