Changes in the scales "attachment" and "control" of the OPD-KJ "structure" axis for inpatients of a pediatric and adolescent psychiatric clinic

Abstract

Changes in the scales "attachment" and "control" of the OPD-KJ "structure" axis for inpatients of a pediatric and adolescent psychiatric clinic Abstract. Abstracts: Despite the great importance of structural deficits in adolescent patients, studies on changes that occur in the course of their inpatient psychiatric treatment are lacking. This study assesses the effectiveness of inpatient psychodynamic psychotherapy, the scales "attachment" and "control" of the "structure" axis of Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnostics in Childhood and Adolescence (OPD-KJ). The study was carried out by dual case leaders (psychotherapist and pedagogue/nurse) on 75 patients (12-18 years) at the beginning and at end of 8 weeks of therapy. Correlations between the dimensions were investigated Pearson's r. Subsequently, we analyzed the four subdimensions of control and attachment using analyses of variance with repeated measurement (RM-ANOVA) to determine whether and to what extent these different subdimensions changed over time. Finally, we performed analyses of variance with age, sex, and diagnosis as between-person factors to assess their influence on the trajectories of both dimensions. Results show that both the attachment and the control dimension of OPD-CA improved in the course of the adolescents' treatment. This finding, however, was diagnosis-specific: Only adolescents with affective disorders and phobias showed these improvements, whereas no change was found for adolescents with emotional and behavioral disorders beginning in childhood and adolescence. Implications for research and clinical practice are discussed.