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Clinicians, outpatient centers, and clinics throughout the world are systematically collecting data over the course of psychotherapy, including follow-up, to support ‘flagging’ procedures for individual cases. One goal is to provide objective case and program quality evaluations at the end of treatment. Another aim is to use treatment process, outcome, and follow-up information to support clinical decisions at the beginning of, during, and after treatment. These data, by-products of clinical work, can have useful applications within a patient-focused psychotherapy research strategy. The author presents patient-focused psychotherapy research as an alternative strategy to efficacy and effectiveness research. He also describes 2 examples that illustrate the individualized prediction of therapeutic progress and the development of treatment-relevant decision rules to inform ongoing clinical practice.
Wolfgang Lutz (Sun,) studied this question.