Regarding the image of behavior therapy - A survey among Austrian psychiatrists and neurologists

In literature there are only few studies concerning the 'image' of behavior therapy, none of them dealing with the question how a group of professionals, who work with psychiatric patients, judge this psychotherapeutic school. The authors investigated how specialists for psychiatry and neurology or neurology and psychiatry grade behavior therapy and/or behavior therapists. The results of this study, which was carried out anonymously by mail questionnaire, show that behavior therapy ranks high concerning relevance in everyday practice. Furthermore behavior therapy is being seen as suitable in the therapy of most mental disorders, while behavior therapists show a tendency to give better grades than psychoanalysts. Finally self-assessment and assessment by psychoanalysts (using 53 adjectives) are presented, where it shows that there are major differences in the judgement of 'common psychotherapeutic factors' between the two groups.