Treatment Failures in Behavior Therapy

All clinicians experience treatment failures: The interventions are not successful, and the patient does not improve. Other times, some progress is made, but the patient continues to perform below the level of functioning he or she had prior to the onset of the problem. Therefore, it is important to try to understand the circumstances under which treatment is more likely to fail. Many of these parameters have been identified clinically and supported through research on predictors of treatment outcome for behavior therapy. There are a number of such predictors that elevate risk of poor treatment response, and various strategies are employed to enhance outcome in the face of such predictors. These can be divided into two main categories: patient characteristics and therapist characteristics.