Costs and benefits of long-term psychoanalytic therapy: changes in health care use and work impairment.

Objective: systematic review regarding the effectiveness of long-term psychoanalytic therapy (LPT) on health care use and work impairment in adult outpatients.

Method: a systematic search for studies published between 1970 and 2005. Calculation of the weighted mean changes between pretreatment and treatment termination, and between pretreatment and follow-up.