RÉSUMÉ
BACKGROUND: Group psychotherapy is an effective treatment for patients with mental health issues. This study aims to evaluate data on the effectiveness of a cost-free short-term outpatient group psychotherapy project for patients with mixed mental health issues in Tyrol, Austria. METHODS: In this naturalistic observational study, outpatients taking part in the psychotherapeutic group treatment between spring 2018 and spring 2020 were included. Patients completed the patient health questionnaire (PHQ-D), an item of the working ability index (WAI) and single items on symptom burden, treatment expectation and perceived benefit before the first (T0) and/or last group session (T1). Mean changes were investigated using repeated measure analyses of variance (rANOVA). RESULTS: A total of 98 patients were included in the study. Statistically significant improvements with medium to large effect sizes were observed for depression (η2â¯= 0.22, pâ¯< 0.001), somatization (η2â¯= 0.10, pâ¯= 0.008), anxiety (η2â¯= 0.18, pâ¯< 0.001), and subjective working ability (η2â¯= 0.22, pâ¯< 0.001). Neither age (pâ¯= 0.85), sex (pâ¯= 0.34), baseline symptoms (pâ¯= 0.29-0.77), nor previous experience with individual (pâ¯= 0.15) or group psychotherapy (pâ¯= 0.29) were associated with treatment outcome. However, treatment expectation at baseline was significantly associated with the patients' perception of the treatment benefit (râ¯= 0.39, pâ¯< 0.001). CONCLUSION: Our study highlights the benefit of outpatient short-term group psychotherapy for individuals with mental health issues. Group psychotherapy should be offered free of charge to individuals with mental health issues by social health providers.