Workshop on the Outcome Research and Manual of Technique

For this workshop we presented an outline of our retrospective study of 763 case-records treated from 1952 to 1992 at the Anna Freud Centre1.

Sample results were given from an investigation of treatment outcome in children with anxiety and depressive disorders. The findings from this part of the study fit nicely a theoretical model concerning those children who require intensive treatment. This model was presented in 1991 at the 13th International Scientific Colloquium by the group of Centre staff who are engaged in writing a treatment manual2.

In the second half of the workshop session an account of this treatment manual was given by Jill Miller, whose recent PhD thesis involved a validation of specific sections of the manual through interviews with Centre staff. Dr Miller presented extracts from the manual and from the theoretical model she had constructed from these interviews, giving the use of the transference as an example.

The treatment manual, the findings of the retrospective study and a number of other pieces of work in progress are essential elements in the design and implementation of our major prospective study of treatment process and outcome, which was also briefly discussed.