In November of 1960 a survey was conducted in all Veterans Administration (VA) Mental Hygiene Clinics principally to obtain data concerning the duration of current and prior courses of individual psychotherapy. A growing number of patients are known to have been either in continuous treatment or to have received successive courses of treatment totaling more than 2 years. In order to determine the size of the problem and to plan future treatment procedures it seemed important to collect at least some elementary information concerning these patients, their treatment, and their therapists.
All 67 VA Mental Hygiene Clinics were asked to report on patients seen for indi- vidual psychotherapy during the month of November, 1960. Each therapist reported on all of his patients whose appointments were on a regularly scheduled basis for treatment interviews lasting 30 min. or longer. Patients who did not have at least