Prognosis

Under forecast is understood in psychotherapy and clinical psychology, psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine, as in medicine, the prediction of the future course of the disease. Due to the extraordinary complexity of the forecasts are only Wahrscheinlichkeitsausssagen.

The prognosis depends on the specific diagnosis and other various factors ( comorbidity, compliance, social living conditions, etc. )

Examples of disease processes:

• Phasic progressive development
• Chronic static development
• Chronic progressive development

Prognosis in psychology

In psychology, the prognosis ( prognosis ) is a branch of diagnostics. So a forecast is a psychological- diagnostic significance eg about the school, academic and professional success, etc., or even over the course of a mental disorder or the rehabilitation of an offender.

When using an appropriate combination of techniques, professional use, evaluation and interpretation by psychologists, the reliability and validity of these forward-looking statements are relatively high. The validity decreases with increase in the forecast period, ie the period over which the statement is to extend ( a prognostic statement about the professional success in 20 years has practically no validity).

In areas of prognostic statements in traffic psychology and in the broadest sense professional contexts (ie also including school, university, education, vocational rehabilitation ), the psychological prognosis by far the most commonly used and is here in terms of the scientific substantiation most advanced.

In the area of ​​research is currently dominated methodological aspects of forecasts in the right psychology, especially the development and evaluation of mathematical- psychological and psychometric statistical models in areas of crime forecasting. Thus, for example by means of the formula

By substituting the appropriate variables

• X1 = age in years
• X2 = gender ( 0 or 1)
• X3 = number of criminal convictions in youth
• X4 = total number of previous convictions
• X5 = time in years that have elapsed since the first conviction
• X6 = type of offense (according to table)

The probability of relapse of a detained offender be determined ( method according to the Offender Group Reconviction Scale by Hanson and Thornton ).

Prognosis in Psychosomatic Medicine

In contrast to somatic diseases indicated the absence of psychopathological symptoms do not necessarily point to a recovery. Rather neurotic processes can also proceed in secret or even produce no obvious symptoms. Also, an improvement in symptoms during therapy is not necessarily a cure out, but can also be due to a restored ability to compensate. This then means only that the disease is currently producing no symptoms. This comes from the fact that the symptoms of the disease is not the same, but showing only the expression.

Prognosis in psychiatry

In psychiatry, the disease can sometimes be quite reliably predicted. For example, certain forms of phasic psychoses typically occur regularly with relapses in appearance, but again may remit completely, so that patients are afterwards hardly affected. For other diseases, especially in schizophrenic to be reckoned with chronicity.

• Psychological Assessment
• Clinical Psychology
• Psychotherapy
• Forensic Psychology
• Psychosomatic medicine
• Psychiatry