NCT02325167

Short-term Existential Behavioural Therapy for Informal Caregivers of Palliative Patients: a Randomised Controlled Trial

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 130 (actual)
• Sponsor: Ludwig-Maximilians - University of Munich · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 21 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

The purpose of the study is to test the effectiveness of a short-term manualised individual psychotherapy, called Existential Behavioural Therapy (EBT), to prevent depression in informal caregivers of palliative patients.

Detailed description

The investigators have developed and pilot-tested a short-term manualised individual psychotherapy, called Existential Behavioural Therapy (EBT), to reduce psychological distress in informal caregivers of palliative patients. The investigators propose to conduct a two-arm randomised controlled trial (RCT) to test the effectiveness of EBT against usual care for the reduction of distress and the promotion of quality of life. Two one-to-one manualised psychotherapeutic sessions will be compared to a treatment-as-usual control group.Treatment-as-usual includes two supportive sessions. The design will be an unblinded RCT consisting of two conditions (EBT and Treatment-as-usual), with assessment at pre- and post-treatment and follow-ups at four weeks and six months. The trial will take place in the Clinic of Palliative Care, University of Munich (Klinik und Poliklinik für Palliativmedizin der LMU München).

Conditions

• Depression

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	EBT	participants assigned to the intervention arm will receive 2 manualised therapy sessions with focus on mindfulness and activating resources delivered by trained therapists at the Clinic of Palliative Care
BEHAVIORAL	treatment-as-usual	participants assigned to the treatment-as-usual arm will receive 2 supportive sessions delivered by trained therapists at the Clinic of Palliative Care

Timeline

• Start date: 2015-01-01
• Primary completion: 2018-08-01
• Completion: 2019-01-01
• First posted: 2014-12-24
• Last updated: 2019-08-14

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Germany