Challenges to university counseling centers such as the increase of more severe symptomatology and the increase in minority clients result in an increase in premature termination of clients.
Premature termination interferes with the effective delivery of clinical services.
This study was conducted to illustrate the patterns of premature termination in a university-counseling center and to identify client, therapist, and process characteristics related to the incidence of premature termination. Descriptive and predictive models of analyses were provided by the use of survival analytic techniques. Archival data for this study were collected from the University of Texas at San Antonio's counseling center. Subjects were 139 randomly selected students utilizing the counseling center for individual counseling during the academic year 1993-1994. The dependent variable was time to termination and the independent variables were client gender, ethnicity, age, income, and severity, therapist gender, ethnicity, and age, and client-therapist agreement on the presenting problem.