The failure of exposure treatment in agoraphobia: implications for the practice of nurse therapists and community psychiatric nurses.

There are no systematic studies of the failure of psychiatric nursing interventions and few very such studies in the psychological/psychiatric outcome literature. This study reports a controlled study of exposure treatment with agoraphobic clients who were treated by nurse therapists and psychologists. This includes an analysis of the four categories of treatment failure (i.e. treatment refusers, treatment dropouts, failures and relapsers). The analysis consisted of an examination of the outcome data of clients who met a priori criteria for the categories of failure and an examination of questionnaire responses. The results have implications for psychiatric nursing practice, particularly with regard to preparation for treatment. Additionally, the results indicate that much more research needs to be carried out on treatment methods and that exposure alone produces a significant but limited effect. Finally, the paper suggests that outcome research is a priority in psychiatric nursing.