Therapeutic Interaction in Dropout and Adhesion Cases in an Intervention with Mothers

Abstract

Therapeutic interaction analysis encompasses the mutual influence between therapist’ behavior and client’ behavior during sessions, according observations, systematic records, categorizations, and description of patterns of behaviors. The present study aims to describe the interactions between therapist and one client that dropped-out and one client that concluded an intervention in group with mothers. Participants were a mother that dropout the intervention (client A), a mother that conclude the intervention (client S), and a therapist. Two hours of the third session were categorized (last session accomplished by client A), using the software Observer XT and the Multidimensional Behavioral Coding System. The following data were analyzed: a) frequencies of therapist´s behaviors presented to client A and client S by the session’s phase; b) frequencies of clients’ behaviors (clients A and S) by the session’s phase; c) sequential analysis results. Main results: a) therapist’s categories presented to client A that stood out: Information request, Approval, Recommendation, and Interpretation (INT), the last two classified as directive behavior; b) the category Agreement was not presented by client A, which in turn presented Opposition; c) Client S emitted the category Agreement in high frequency and not presented Opposition; d) sequential analysis revealed that Recommendation and Interpretation presented do client S were preceded or succeeded by Empathy and Approval. In general, this study considered that contextual elements (e.g. session’s phase and sequential analysis) are relevant. Overall, this study brings light to some conditions related to adhesion in an intervention in group with mothers: the alternation between directive (Recommendation and Interpretation) and non-directive therapist´s behavior (Empathy and Approval), high frequency of Agreement e low occurrence of Opposition presented by client.