Inpatient treatment to online aftercare: E-mailing themes as a function of therapeutic outcomes

The authors applied the meaning extraction method (MEM) to 4,241 e-mails written by 297 participants of an email-based aftercare program following inpatient psychotherapy. Principal-components analysis of the most frequently used nouns in the e-mails yielded nine components: life decisions and copin...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychotherapy research 2010-01, Vol.20 (1), p.71-85
Main Authors: Wolf, Markus, Chung, Cindy K., Kordy, Hans
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Aftercare
Aged
e-mail
Electronic Mail
Electronic mail systems
Feedback, Psychological
Female
Health Behavior
Humans
Intention
Internet
Male
meaning extraction method
Middle Aged
Motivation
Patient Admission
Personality Assessment
psychotherapeutic aftercare
Psychotherapy
Recreation
Self Concept
Semantics
Sex Factors
Social Adjustment
text analysis
Therapy, Computer-Assisted
Treatment Outcome
Young Adult
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The authors applied the meaning extraction method (MEM) to 4,241 e-mails written by 297 participants of an email-based aftercare program following inpatient psychotherapy. Principal-components analysis of the most frequently used nouns in the e-mails yielded nine components: life decisions and coping, relationship conflict, psychological and physical symptoms, family of origin, social and leisure activities, present family and household, treatment, exercise and diet, and work. Relative to men, women focused more on symptoms, exercise and diet, and family of origin, but less on work. Older participants were more likely to e-mail about their present family. Younger participants were more likely to e-mail about their family of origin and exercise and diet. Patients who showed no therapeutic gains during their prior treatment wrote more about symptoms than patients who had improved. The potentials and limitations of the MEM for the analysis of therapy corpora are discussed.
ISSN:1050-3307
1468-4381
DOI:10.1080/10503300903179799