Tailor-made versus standardized therapy of phobic patients

The Bochum anxiety-therapy study examined the question as to whether adaptation of treatment to an individual case, typical for clinical practice but untypical for research projects, will lead to better treatment outcome. 120 phobic patients were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups: an experimental group with individual treatment planned by the therapist, a control group with standardized therapy (exposure in vivo), and a yoked control group. Contrary to expectations, the standardized group proved to be most successful. This holds true for experienced and inexperienced therapists and for patients with different phobias and panic disorders of various severities. The superiority of the standardized group proved to be the result of the method “exposure in vivo”. The factor “adaptation” was of no relevance. The results support the assumption that too much flexibility and too much adaptation can be disadvantageous, at least for the treatment of phobic patients.