Determinants of outpatients' satisfaction with therapists : relation to outcome.

This study investigated outpatients' satisfaction with therapists, as determined by their perceptions of therapists' behaviors and characteristics, and related patient satisfaction to measures of psychotherapy outcome derived from patients themselves, therapists, and an independent rater. After discharge, 138 demographically and diagnostically heterogeneous patients who had been in psychodynamically oriented psychotherapy returned mailed questionnaires. Therapist characteristics and behaviors such as being likeable, accepting, encouraging, and respectful, helping patients to understand themselves better, and not being "too quiet," as well as overall ratings of satisfaction with therapists, were significantly correlated with patients' ratings of improvement and of help received and with therapists' ratings of outcome.