Positive clinical impressions: II. Participants' evaluations

Nine months after the residential stage of Koach, participants were asked to evaluate the program's effectiveness. Most of the veterans reported improvement in the areas queried, and especially in social relations, and nearly all of them stated that they would recommend the program to other veterans. The commander-therapists became the major source of help for these veterans following the Koach project, and about half reported that they participated regularly in self-help groups. Most of the participants acquired coping techniques that continued to serve them 9 months after the end of the residential stage of Koach. One of the more important measures of Koach was thought to be the veterans' own evaluations of the project, their assessment of the project's success in achieving its aims, and their satisfaction with it. In this article we will present the subjects' evaluations of treatment effectiveness as expressed in behavioral and emotional changes that they attributed to the treatment.