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OBJECTIVES A survey serves to clarify whether psychotherapists working in inpatient and day treatment psychotherapeutic hospitals feel sufficiently trained as group therapists and what their specific training needs are. METHODS The survey queried 175 therapists from different hospitals and professions who perform group psychotherapy in their hospital. The questionnaire focussed on training experiences, everyday group practice, and training needs. RESULTS As expected, only some of the therapists had completed training as group therapist. The therapists are faced with a wide variety of group formats and patients in their everyday work and reveal a broad spectrum of training needs. CONCLUSIONS The survey, although not entirely representative, indicates general and specific needs of group therapists within psychotherapeutic hospitals and underlines the role of training and therapist experience in reducing uneasiness toward group psychotherapy.

Within a multisite study, including 289 inpatients from six different hospitals who underwent interpersonal-psychodynamic group psychotherapy, associations among attachment characteristics, therapeutic factors, and treatment outcome were investigated. Attachment characteristics were assessed with an interview-based measure (Adult Attachment Prototype Rating [AAPR]) as well as an attachment self-report (Bielefeld Questionnaire of Client Expectations [BQCE]). Therapeutic factors were measured retrospectively with the Dusseldorf Therapeutic Factors Questionnaire and treated as an individual- as well as a hospital-specific characteristic. On an individual level, only the group climate factor independently predicted treatment outcome (i.e., Symptom Checklist-90-R Global Severity Index and Inventory of Interpersonal Problems mean). If simultaneously but separately included into a path model, analyses revealed independent significant effects of AAPR-Security and BQCE-Security on group climate. If modeled as a latent variable (common attachment security), a substantially higher proportion of group climate variance could be explained. Further analyses revealed interactions between particular therapeutic factors and attachment characteristics, indicating a particular importance of these therapeutic factors for different attachment categories.

The authors evaluated 617 patients at hospital admission using an interpersonal interview analyzed with the Adult Attachment Prototype Rating (Strauss, Lobo-Drost, & Pilkonis, 1999) in nine different psychotherapeutic hospitals. Attachment characteristics derived from this method served as predictors of treatment outcome. Outcome was quantified in all sites using the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised, Inventory of Interpersonal Problems, and, in a subsample, the Impairment Score (Schepank, 2003) as an observer rating. All measures were administered at patient admission and discharge. Additionally, patients completed the Bielefeld Questionnaire of Client Expectations (BQCE) at admission to assess self-reported attachment expectations toward the therapist. The study combined patients with a variety of clinical disorders (predominantly depressive and anxiety disorders, personality disorders, eating disorders) and confirmed the expected correlations of attachment characteristics with diagnoses and other c...