Prediction of Psychotherapy Treatment Utilization
Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Graduate Program:
- Psychology
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- August 22, 2017
- Committee Members:
- Louis Georges Castonguay, Thesis Advisor
- Jeffrey Hayes, Committee Member
- James Marshall Lebreton, Committee Member
- Keywords:
- psychotherapy
- treatment utilization
- Abstract:
- Within university counseling centers, there are increasing needs but few resources to meet those needs. There is also evidence that some clients use more resources than others, often dramatically so. This discrepancy between resource demand and availability leads to the need to identify characteristics of clients who utilize more sessions. This will allow counseling centers to make empirically informed decisions around treatment planning and allocation. The current study employs mixed effects negative binomial regression to identify pretreatment predictors of client session utilization within a university counseling center setting. Additionally, a logistic regression is conducted to identify predictors of membership in a high resource utilization group, defined as the clients who utilize the highest 20% of sessions. Several predictors of both utilization and membership in the high resource utilization group are identified. Clinical implications and implications for future research are discussed.