Personal resources in inpatient psychotherapy - Relationships and development

Abstract

We examined how personal resources develop during inpatient psychodynamic psychotherapy, their relationship to symptom development, Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnosis (OPD-2), and sociodemographic aspects. 483 patients were examined using self-assessment questionnaires (Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI), Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), Inventory of Interpersonal Problems (IIP), Questionnaire of Actual Resource Realization (RES)) as well as the expert ratings Global Assessment of Functioning Scale (GAF), Impairment Score (IS), OPD-2, and the Heidelberg Structural Change Scale (HSCS), both at the beginning and the end of treatment. There was a marked improvement in the realization of personal resources during inpatient psychotherapy, which showed significant correlations to the improvement of symptoms. The extent of improvement of resources correlated with the duration of psychotherapy and the assessment of the psychodynamic therapy foci on the HSCS. The results show that personal resources are activated when successfully working on the psychodynamic foci in psychodynamic inpatient treatment, and that this corresponds to an improvement of symptoms.