Resumen de Psychological Treatments Features and Outcomes in Spanish Public Mental Health Centres

Sara González González, Marta González Pescador, María del Carmen Iglesias García, María Ruiz Torres, María Victoria Rojo García, Marta Sandoya Arozamena, Concepción Fernández Rodríguez, María Dolores Paz Caballero

• Little outcomes research has been developed at public mental health care centres up to now, where however a huge percentage of population is treated. Our purpose was to describe features and outcomes of patients attending some public psychological consultations in order to be assessed and if needed treated, in Cantabria (Spain); this should aim at improving effectiveness and efficiency of our psychological treatments. Our sample was composed by all new users coming to 3 clinical psychologists? consultations for 3.5 years (N= 1962). We measured several clinical, sociodemographic and outcome variables at the beginning of these treatments (pretest), at its end or 1 year after the start (postest), and at 1 and 2 years follow-ups after postest; these variables were collected in clinical interviews or through a telephone survey. Postest showed that 51.4% of patients improved their state after our psychotherapies, while 31.7% did not. For the first year after postest 67.1% of them had not visited any public mental health centre in our region, and 82.4% had not done it for the second year. Previous mental health treatments, sick leaves at work, organic illnesses, applied treatments, asking for a written report, the patient?s involvement into the referral and collaboration into therapy were the main predictive variables of outcomes