ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the findings of an audit of a community-based psychoanalytic psychotherapy service for young people aged between 12 and 25 years which started in 1993. Regarding current standards, there is widespread agreement among those working on the evaluation of change of children and young people in psychotherapy about the need to use consistent and accurate measures which take into account the full symptomatic presentation with age. The use of repeated measures of outcome during the course of treatment, as well as measures at the beginning and end of treatment and a follow-up evaluation, is also desirable. The Brandon Centre specializes in the treatment of troubled adolescents and young people with once-weekly, and in a few cases twice-weekly, psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Young people are assessed with a number of measures by the treating psychotherapist at the beginning of treatment. Mean scores for internalizing, externalizing and total problems all showed statistically significant levels of improvement between intake and one year.
