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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- For decades, psychotherapy has been part of the practice of psychiatry. Despite the treatments historical prominence, new indications show psychotherapy is on the decline.
According to a new report published by researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and the Columbia University Medical Center, office-based psychiatrists are relying less on psychotherapy as a treatment for their patients.
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The decline is being attributed to reimbursement policies favoring brief medication management office visits rather than longer psychotherapy office visits and the introduction of newer psychotropic medications with fewer adverse side effects.
Researchers analyzed data over a 10-year period of office-based psychiatrist surveys from 1996 through 2005. The percentage of office visits involving psychotherapy declined from 44.4 percent between 1996 and 1997 to 28.9 percent between 2004 and 2005.
These trends highlight a gradual but important change in the content of outpatient psychiatric care in the United States and a continued shift toward medicalization of psychiatric practice, study authors wrote.
Various forms of psychotherapy, either alone or in combination with medications, are recommended for the treatment of major depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder and other psychiatric illnesses.
SOURCE: Archives of General Psychiatry, 2008;65:962-970
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