[Mentalization ability and treatment success in psychosomatic rehabilitation]. / Mentalisierungsfähigkeit und Behandlungserfolg in der Psychosomatischen Rehabilitation.

Objectives: Psychosomatic rehabilitation clinics represent an important branch of care with good treatment results in Germany. So far, however, it is largely unclear which processes underlie the treatment successes. In the partial evaluations of the Hersfeld catamnesis study presented here, recourse is made to the construct of mentalizing ability, which has become very important in recent psychotherapy research. Methods: The mentalization ability of a large sample (N = 559) was assessed with the help of the Mentalization Questionnaire (MZQ), and psychological and somatic complaints were assessed with HEALTH-PSB scale from HEALTH-49 at three points in time, namely at admission, at discharge and in a 6-month catamnesis. Results: Both the total score of the MZQ and all subscores show significant reductions in mentalization deficits in the small effect size range, the HEALTH-PSB in the high effect size range and the catamnesis in the medium effect size range. A regression analysis shows that the reduction in mentalization deficits has a high predictive power for symptom improvement. Conclusions: The results indicate that the construct of mentalization ability is a central target variable in psychosomatic rehabilitation.

Behandlungsergebnisse in der Psychosomatischen Rehabilitation ­ Die Hersfelder Katamnesestudie.

AIM OF THE STUDY: Existing evaluation studies show the effectiveness of treatments in psychosomatic rehabilitation clinics. However, the clinics are facing new challenges, which can be attributed to the changes in the world of work, for example. At the same time, new patient groups such as older patients are coming more into focus, for whom the clinics are not yet sufficiently prepared. Against this background, an evaluation study was conducted in the Klinik am Hainberg, a psychosomatic rehabilitation clinic, to examine the changes in central dimensions of the outcome in psychosomatic medicine. METHOD: For the comparison of admission vs. discharge, data are available from a sample of 761 patients, of whom 559 still responded to the 6-month Follow-up) (73% response rate). Five modules of the HEALTH-49 were evaluated. RESULTS: In all modules, improvements were found with medium to large effect sizes at discharge, and with medium effect sizes at 6-month Follow-up. Neither age, nor gender, nor time off work had an influence on the rehabilitation outcome. Only lower education was associated with less improvement. CONCLUSIONS: The results show the effectiveness of the treatments studied. The practiced rehabilitation concept seems to be effective even for patient groups that are particularly in focus, such as those with longer work incapacity or also older patients.