Cognitive and Secondary Symptom Variables as Predictive Factors in the Treatment of Agoraphobic In-Patients

Abstract

The ability of health locus of control, causal attributional, and secondary symptom variables to predict response to an integrated behavioural and psychodynamic treatment of agoraphobic in-patients, both immediately and one year after treatment, was investigated (N = 36). It was hypothesized that patients who retained an external locus of control during treatment would be likely to relapse after treatment. Further, it was hypothesized that tendencies to externalize locus of control, to attribute bad events to internal, stable, and global causes, and to attribute good events to external, unstable, and specific causes, would influence the treatment process in a negative way. It was also hypothesized that high levels of secondary symptoms, that is depression and general anxiety, would inhibit progress. None of these hypotheses were consistently supported by the results. This indicates that more precise and sophisticated models of agoraphobia development and treatment process are needed.