Efficacy of psychological interventions for young adults with mild-to-moderate depressive symptoms: A meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Psychological interventions are commonly used to treat mild-to-moderate depression, but their efficacy in young adults has not been exhaustively addressed. This meta-analysis aims to establish it in comparison to no treatment, wait-list, usual treatment, passive interventions, and other bona-fide treatments. METHODS: The search was conducted in Scopus, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, ClinicalTrials.gov, the ISRCTN Registry, Cochrane CENTRAL, Clarivate BIOSIS Previews and the METAPSY database, retrieving studies from the start of records to April 2020. Eligibility criteria included samples of 16-30 years experiencing mild-to-moderate depressive symptoms and participating in randomized controlled trials (RCTs), non-RCTs, or pre-post studies measuring depressive symptomatology and featuring psychological treatments. RESULTS: Up to 45 studies met criteria, consisting of 3,947 participants, assessed using the Quality Assessment Tool for Quantitative Studies and their results meta-analyzed assuming random effects. Psychological interventions proved to be efficacious in RCTs compared to no treatment (g = -0.68; 95% CI = -0.87, -0.48) and wait-list (g = -1.04; 95% CI = -1.25, -0.82), while depressive symptoms also improved in pre-post studies (g = -0.99; 95% CI = -1.32, -0.66). However, intervention efficacy was similar to usual care, passive, and bona-fide comparators. The heterogeneity found, a likely reporting bias and the low quality of most studies must be considered when interpreting these results. CONCLUSIONS: Psychological treatments are efficacious to reduce depressive symptoms in young adults, but comparable to other interventions in the mild-to-moderate range. Moderators like depression severity or therapist involvement significantly influenced their efficacy, with results encouraging clinicians to adopt flexible and personalized approaches.

Common and differential dimensions of personal identity between psychosis and depression: The relevance of gender and depressive mood.

Disturbances in personal identity are recognized in psychosis and depression. However, it is unknown whether these disruptions share common processes across clinical groups, or whether there are unique alterations by group or between men and women within each clinical group. To advance on this question, we compared personal identity dimensions in psychosis and depression and investigated the effects of gender and depressive mood. This study assessed dimensions of personal identity using the repertory grid technique among 85 outpatients with psychosis, 85 outpatients with depressive disorders and 85 healthy controls who were matched by age. Data regarding depressive mood and general functioning was also collected. Results showed that self-discrepancies were higher in psychosis and depression than in controls, and were associated with depressive mood. Interpersonal dichotomous thinking was more prevalent in women in both clinical groups. Women with psychosis showed higher ideal-others discrepancy and had a more complex structure of personal identity than their male counterparts. To conclude, alterations in self-ideal and self-others discrepancies may be transdiagnostic dimensions related to depressive mood. Interpersonal dichotomous thinking may also be a common dimensional characteristic in psychosis and depression but more specific to women. Finally, critical views of others and a higher complexity of personal identity may be more specific to women than men with psychosis. Our results are consistent with other studies pointing to the need for person-focused treatments promoting the recovery of a full sense of personal identity, rather than just focusing on specific thoughts and feelings.

The autobiographical group: a tool for the reconstruction of past life experience with the aged.

From a personal construct point of view, writing autobiographical texts becomes a relevant therapeutic ingredient for elderly individuals. If conducted in a context of a group, as Birren proposes [1, 2]; it promotes self-awareness, self-disclosure, and the capacity of generating alternative views of life's experiences. In a group of elderly volunteers from a recreational society of Barcelona (Spain), the guided autobiography method was used to foster the reconstruction of the participant's past life experiences. The degree of reconstruction was assessed through a design that included the administration of a repertory grid at the initial and tenth (last) session. A parallel assessment was applied to a control group of participants with similar demographic characteristics. An adaptation of the method proposed by Feixas for the analysis of autobiographical texts was used to assess the assigned writings of the participants for each session. Results show a significant and gradual change in the construing system of those participants in the autobiographical group. Thus, the distance of the elements self-ideal/self and self-ideal/others significantly decreased in comparison to the control group. It is suggested that the guided autobiography is an adequate therapeutic tool to promote the reconstruction of experience in aged individuals.