The Heidelberg study of psychodynamic psychotherapy for children and adolescents

The present article gives an overview of the Heidelberg Study on the evaluation of psychodynamic psychotherapy for children and adolescents. The study design is described and instruments for the assessment of structural characteristics and the psychotherapeutic process developed and evaluated in the project are presented. Also, results regarding treatment outcome are reported. The aim of the study was to examine the efficacy of short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy in an RCT-trial as well to assess the effectiveness of long-term psychoanalysis in a naturalistic study design. 71 patients aged 6-18 with internalizing and externalizing disorders were treated with an average of 82 therapy sessions. For several variables, a significant statistical superiority of the therapy group compared to the waiting control group could be shown. Considerably higher effect sizes were found for long-term treatment than for short-term psychotherapy. The results demonstrate that short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy and long-term psychoanalysis are highly effective treatments for children and adolescents with mental disorders.