Efficacy and Moderators of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Psychosis Versus Other Psychological Interventions: An Individual-Participant Data Meta-Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Study-level meta-analyses have demonstrated the efficacy of cognitive-behavioural therapy for psychosis (CBTp). Limitations of conventional meta-analysis may be addressed using individual-participant-data (IPD). We aimed to determine a) whether results from IPD were consistent with study-level meta-analyses and b) whether demographic and clinical characteristics moderate treatment outcome. METHODS: We systematically searched PubMed, Embase, PsychInfo and CENTRAL. Authors of RCTs comparing CBTp with other psychological interventions were contacted to obtain original databases. Hierarchical mixed effects models were used to examine efficacy for psychotic symptoms. Patient characteristics were investigated as moderators of symptoms at post-treatment. Sensitivity analyses were conducted for risk of bias, treatment format and study characteristics. RESULTS: We included 14 of 23 eligible RCTs in IPD meta-analyses including 898 patients. Ten RCTs minimised risk of bias. There was no significant difference in efficacy between RCTs providing IPD and those not (p >0.05). CBTp was superior vs. other interventions for total psychotic symptoms and PANSS general symptoms. No demographic or clinical characteristics were robustly demonstrated as moderators of positive, negative, general or total psychotic symptoms at post-treatment. Sensitivity analyses demonstrated that number of sessions moderated the impact of treatment assignment (CBTp or other therapies) on total psychotic symptoms (p = 0.02). CONCLUSIONS: IPD suggest that patient characteristics, including severity of psychotic symptoms, do not significantly influence treatment outcome in psychological interventions for psychosis while investing in sufficient dosage of CBTp is important. IPD provide roughly equivalent efficacy estimates to study-level data although significant benefit was not replicated for positive symptoms. We encourage authors to ensure IPD is accessible for future research.

The symptom-specific efficacy of antidepressant medication vs. cognitive behavioral therapy in the treatment of depression: results from an individual patient data meta-analysis.

A recent individual patient data meta-analysis showed that antidepressant medication is slightly more efficacious than cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in reducing overall depression severity in patients with a DSM-defined depressive disorder. We used an update of that dataset, based on seventeen randomized clinical trials, to examine the comparative efficacy of antidepressant medication vs. CBT in more detail by focusing on individual depressive symptoms as assessed with the 17-item Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression. Five symptoms (i.e., "depressed mood" , "feelings of guilt" , "suicidal thoughts" , "psychic anxiety" and "general somatic symptoms") showed larger improvements in the medication compared to the CBT condition (effect sizes ranging from .13 to .16), whereas no differences were found for the twelve other symptoms. In addition, network estimation techniques revealed that all effects, except that on "depressed mood" , were direct and could not be explained by any of the other direct or indirect treatment effects. Exploratory analyses showed that information about the symptom-specific efficacy could help in identifying those patients who, based on their pre-treatment symptomatology, are likely to benefit more from antidepressant medication than from CBT (effect size of .30) versus those for whom both treatments are likely to be equally efficacious. Overall, our symptom-oriented approach results in a more thorough evaluation of the efficacy of antidepressant medication over CBT and shows potential in "precision psychiatry" .

Translating the BDI and BDI-II into the HAMD and vice versa with equipercentile linking.

AIMS: The Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) are the most frequently used observer-rated and self-report scales of depression, respectively. It is important to know what a given total score or a change score from baseline on one scale means in relation to the other scale. METHODS: We obtained individual participant data from the randomised controlled trials of psychological and pharmacological treatments for major depressive disorders. We then identified corresponding scores of the HAMD and the BDI (369 patients from seven trials) or the BDI-II (683 patients from another seven trials) using the equipercentile linking method. RESULTS: The HAMD total scores of 10, 20 and 30 corresponded approximately with the BDI scores of 10, 27 and 42 or with the BDI-II scores of 13, 32 and 50. The HAMD change scores of -20 and -10 with the BDI of -29 and -15 and with the BDI-II of -35 and -16. CONCLUSIONS: The results can help clinicians interpret the HAMD or BDI scores of their patients in a more versatile manner and also help clinicians and researchers evaluate such scores reported in the literature or the database, when scores on only one of these scales are provided. We present a conversion table for future research.

Component studies of psychological treatments of adult depression: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVES: A recent report from the US Institute of Medicine indicated that identifying core elements of psychosocial interventions is a key step in successfully bringing evidence-based psychosocial interventions into clinical practice. Component studies have the best design to examine these core elements. Earlier reviews resulted in heterogeneous sets of studies and probably missed many studies. METHODS: We conducted a comprehensive search of component studies on psychotherapies for adult depression and included 16 studies with 22 comparisons. RESULTS: Fifteen components were examined of which four were examined in more than one comparison. The pooled difference between the full treatments and treatments with one component removed was g = 0.21 (95% CI: 0.03∼0.39). One study had sufficient statistical power to detect a small effect size and found that adding emotion regulation skills increased the effects of CBT. None of the other studies had enough power to detect an effect size smaller than g = 0.55. Only one study had low risk of bias. CONCLUSIONS: The currently available component studies do not have the statistical power nor the quality to draw any meaningful conclusion about key ingredients of psychotherapies for adult depression.

The Role of Common Factors in Psychotherapy Outcomes.

Psychotherapies may work through techniques that are specific to each therapy or through factors that all therapies have in common. Proponents of the common factors model often point to meta-analyses of comparative outcome studies that show all therapies have comparable effects. However, not all meta-analyses support the common factors model; the included studies often have several methodological problems; and there are alternative explanations for finding comparable outcomes. To date, research on the working mechanisms and mediators of therapies has always been correlational, and in order to establish that a mediator is indeed a causal factor in the recovery process of a patient, studies must show a temporal relationship between the mediator and an outcome, a dose-response association, evidence that no third variable causes changes in the mediator and the outcome, supportive experimental research, and have a strong theoretical framework. Currently, no common or specific factor meets these criteria and can be considered an empirically validated working mechanism. Therefore, it is still unknown whether therapies work through common or specific factors, or both.

Negative effects of psychotherapies for adult depression: A meta-analysis of deterioration rates.

BACKGROUND: The risk for deterioration in patients receiving psychotherapy for adult depression has not been examined extensively and it is not clear whether psychotherapy reduces this risk or may even increase it in some patients. We conducted a meta-analysis of trials comparing these psychotherapies with control conditions that report deterioration rates. METHODS: We used an existing database of randomized trials on psychotherapies for adult depression which was updated up to 1/1/2017, through systematic searches in bibliographic databases. We included trials that reported clinically significant deterioration rates. RESULTS: We included 18 studies with 23 comparisons between therapy and control groups. The pooled risk ratio of deterioration was 0.39 (95% CI: 0.27∼0.57), indicating that patients in the psychotherapy groups have a 61% lower chance to deteriorate than patients in the control groups. We found that 20 patients need to be treated with psychotherapy in order to avoid one case of deterioration, compared to the control conditions. The median deterioration rate in the therapy groups was 4%, and in some studies more than 10%, indicating that clinicians should always be aware of the risk of deterioration. LIMITATIONS: The results should be considered with caution because most studies had at least some risk of bias. Only 6% of all trials comparing psychotherapy with a control condition reported deterioration rates, using different ways to define deterioration which made pooling the prevalence rates across treatments and control groups impossible. CONCLUSIONS: Psychological treatments of adult depression may reduce the risk for deterioration, compared to control groups, but this should be considered with caution because of the small proportion of studies reporting deterioration rates.

Psychotherapies for depression in low- and middle-income countries: a meta-analysis.

Most psychotherapies for depression have been developed in high-income Western countries of North America, Europe and Australia. A growing number of randomized trials have examined the effects of these treatments in non-Western countries. We conducted a meta-analysis of these studies to examine whether these psychotherapies are effective and to compare their effects between studies from Western and non-Western countries. We conducted systematic searches in bibliographical databases and included 253 randomized controlled trials, of which 32 were conducted in non-Western countries. The effects of psychotherapies in non-Western countries were large (g=1.10; 95% CI: 0.91-1.30), with high heterogeneity (I2 =90; 95% CI: 87-92). After adjustment for publication bias, the effect size dropped to g=0.73 (95% CI: 0.51-0.96). Subgroup analyses did not indicate that adaptation to the local situation was associated with the effect size. Comparisons with the studies in Western countries showed that the effects of the therapies were significantly larger in non-Western countries, also after adjusting for characteristics of the participants, the treatments and the studies. These larger effect sizes in non-Western countries may reflect true differences indicating that therapies are indeed more effective; or may be explained by the care-as-usual control conditions in non-Western countries, often indicating that no care was available; or may be the result of the relative low quality of many trials in the field. This study suggests that psychotherapies that were developed in Western countries may or may not be more effective in non-Western countries, but they are probably no less effective and can therefore also be used in these latter countries.

Correction: Adolescent Depression and Negative Life Events, the Mediating Role of Cognitive Emotion Regulation.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0161062.].

Who benefits from psychotherapies for adult depression? A meta-analytic update of the evidence.

It is not clear whether specific target groups for psychotherapies in adult depression benefit as much from these treatments as other patients. We examined target groups that have been examined in randomized trials, including women, older adults, students, minorities, patients with general medical disorders, and specific types of depression, and we examined where patients were recruited. We conducted subgroup and multivariate metaregression analyses in a sample of 256 trials (with 332 comparisons) comparing psychotherapy with an inactive control condition. Only 22% of the studies had low risk of bias (RoB), heterogeneity was high and there was a considerable risk of publication bias. A meta-regression analysis among low RoB studies showed that effect sizes found for studies among women, older adults, patients with general medical disorders, patients recruited from primary care, and patients scoring above a cut-off on a self-rating depression scale, did not differ significantly from effect sizes from other studies. For other target groups, the number of low RoB studies was too small to draw any conclusion. We found few indications that psychotherapies for adult depression are more or less effective in women, older adults, patients with comorbid general medical disorders, and primary care patients.

How effective are cognitive behavior therapies for major depression and anxiety disorders? A meta-analytic update of the evidence.

We report the current best estimate of the effects of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) in the treatment of major depression (MDD), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), panic disorder (PAD) and social anxiety disorder (SAD), taking into account publication bias, the quality of trials, and the influence of waiting list control groups on the outcomes. In our meta-analyses, we included randomized trials comparing CBT with a control condition (waiting list, care-as-usual or pill placebo) in the acute treatment of MDD, GAD, PAD or SAD, diagnosed on the basis of a structured interview. We found that the overall effects in the 144 included trials (184 comparisons) for all four disorders were large, ranging from g=0.75 for MDD to g=0.80 for GAD, g=0.81 for PAD, and g=0.88 for SAD. Publication bias mostly affected the outcomes of CBT in GAD (adjusted g=0.59) and MDD (adjusted g=0.65), but not those in PAD and SAD. Only 17.4% of the included trials were considered to be high-quality, and this mostly affected the outcomes for PAD (g=0.61) and SAD (g=0.76). More than 80% of trials in anxiety disorders used waiting list control groups, and the few studies using other control groups pointed at much smaller effect sizes for CBT. We conclude that CBT is probably effective in the treatment of MDD, GAD, PAD and SAD; that the effects are large when the control condition is waiting list, but small to moderate when it is care-as-usual or pill placebo; and that, because of the small number of high-quality trials, these effects are still uncertain and should be considered with caution.

Adolescent Depression and Negative Life Events, the Mediating Role of Cognitive Emotion Regulation.

BACKGROUND: Depression during adolescence is a serious mental health problem. Difficulties in regulating evoked emotions after stressful life events are considered to lead to depression. This study examined if depressive symptoms were mediated by various cognitive emotion regulation strategies after stressful life events, more specifically, the loss of a loved one, health threats or relational challenges. METHODS: We used a sample of 398 adolescents (Mage = 16.94, SD = 2.90), including 52 depressed outpatients, who all reported stressful life event(s). Path analyses in Mplus were used to test mediation, for the whole sample as well as separately for participants scoring high versus low on depression, using multigroup analyses. RESULTS: Health threats and relational challenging stressful life events were associated with depressive symptoms, while loss was not. More frequent use of maladaptive strategies was related to more depressive symptoms. More frequent use of adaptive strategies was related to less depressive symptoms. Specific life events were associated with specific emotion regulation strategies. The relationship between challenging, stressful life events and depressive symptoms in the whole group was mediated by maladaptive strategies (self-blame, catastrophizing and rumination). No mediation effect was found for adaptive strategies. CONCLUSION: The association between relational challenging, stressful life events and depressive symptoms was mediated by maladaptive, cognitive emotion regulation strategies.