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This article focuses on the case of an outpatient psychiatric service. In 1956, the senior author compared three methods to describe the caseload of an outpatient psychiatric service. This comparison has been repeated some 19 years later in the same clinic. In the follow-up method of the closed cases, 51% showed improvement in 1956, as compared to only 43% in 1975. The improvement rate dropped somewhat for all diagnoses in 1975 in the follow-up method for cases closed or inactive, but for the 35% of the cases that were still in treatment, 68% showed some improvement.