Suchergebnisse

The BIOMED II 'Improving Psychiatric Treatment in Residential Programmes for Emerging Dependency Groups' project provided a relatively large sample (n = 863) of men (77%) and women (23%) in therapeutic community treatment in nine European countries. This paper's aim is to search for gender differences in profiles of therapeutic community clients on the basis of the different areas of functioning of the EuropASI. A binary logistic regression model was used to avoid the confounding effects of country and age. Our findings confirm what is found in the American literature: compared to men, women have a much worse profile in various areas of functioning when entering treatment. In response, they may require a gender-adapted set of therapeutic interventions at the moment they enter treatment.

The BIOMED II project, 'Improving Psychiatric Treatment in Residential Programmes for Newly Dependent Groups through Relapse Prevention', provided a large database of characteristics of men and women in European therapeutic communities (TCs). One of the aims of the project was to improve the treatment of 'emerging dependency groups' through better assessment. Although American TC research has shown that there are important differences between men and women that should be taken into account when organising treatment, the BIOMED project failed to report on gender differences. This article tries to fill this gap by presenting an overview of the gender differences in the TC clients and lists the characteristics of the participating European TCs. The two overviews are given for each country separately. Descriptive methods were used. The authors discuss whether the TC programme considers the differences between men and women and whether the 'community as method' approach is gender sensitive.