Results
Descriptive statistics
Out of the 40 participating families who started with PCIT, 11 families (27.5%) dropped out before treatment was completed, and seven families (63.6%) dropped out within the first ten sessions of treatment. There were several reasons that caused families to terminate treatment prematurely. Four families required other, more intensive treatment (36.4%), and two families (18.2%) disagreed with the treatment approach, particularly the time-out procedure in the Parent-Directed Interaction phase. Another two families (18.2%) simply stopped showing up for treatment, another family (9.1%) was too busy to participate, one family (9.1%) had to stop treatment due to severe parental relational problems and for one family (9.1%), the child’s behaviour improved enough to terminate treatment before meeting all skill levels by the parents.