Predicting psychotherapy duration from therapists' sex, professional affiliation, democratic values, and community mental health ideology.

Analyzed therapists' scores on the Community Mental Health Ideology (CMHI) and Democratic values scales and their sex and professional affiliation to predict the number of psychotherapy visits of 166 outpatients. A step-wise multiple regression indicated that all variables taken together accounted for 3% of the variance in treatment duration. A four-way analysis of variance revealed only a significant main effect for the CMHI scale. Thus, low-scoring CMHI therapists had significantly more therapy sessions with their clients than high-scoring CMHI therapists. The latter may emphasize briefer treatment approaches that stress outside resources and primary prevention.