Journal of Child and Adolescent Behavior
Open Access

Research Article

Therapeutic Alliance and Outcomes in Children and Adolescents Served in a Community Mental Health System

¹Brigham Young University, USA

²Department of Psychology, Brigham Young University, USA

*Corresponding Author:

Jared S Warren
Department of Psychology
Brigham Young University
291 TLRB, Provo, UT 84602, USA
E-mail: jared_warren@byu.edu

Received Date: February 27, 2013; Accepted Date: August 16, 2013; Published Date: August 20, 2013

Citation: Abrishami GF, Warren JS (2013) Therapeutic Alliance and Outcomes in Children and Adolescents Served in a Community Mental Health System. J Child Adolesc Behav 1:110. doi:10.4172/2375-4494.1000110

Copyright: © 2013 Abrishami GF, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

This study examined the association between the therapeutic alliance and behavioral/emotional outcomes in 350 youth receiving outpatient therapy at a community mental health clinic. Constructs of interest were measured at intake, 3 week, 2 month, 4 month and 6 month intervals. Results indicated that early therapeutic alliance ratings were not related to premature termination. Problem type was related to the formation of the alliance only at the three week time point. A relationship between age of the client and the formation of a therapeutic alliance was true only at the 6 month time point. Finally, therapist’s ratings of the alliance were not correlated with psychotherapy outcome. These findings indicate that further work is needed to understand associations between therapeutic alliance and youth treatment outcomes.

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