NCT04996433

A Comparison of Two Psychotherapy Programs in Persistently Depressed Treatment-Resistant Inpatients

Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy (CBASP) vs. Behavioral Activation (BA) in Persistently Depressed Treatment-resistant Inpatients: Efficacy, Moderators, and Mediators of Change

• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 396 (estimated)
• Sponsor: University of Greifswald · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 20 Years – 70 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

The purpose of this study is to compare the Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy (CBASP) conducted over 16 weeks (acute and continuation treatment) with Behavioral Activation (BA; same dose and duration) in persistently depressed treatment-resistant inpatients regarding efficacy, moderators and mediators of change.

Detailed description

About half of all psychiatric inpatients with depression suffer from persistent depressive disorder (PDD). Given their high degree of treatment-resistance (TR), comorbidity, suicidality, and hospitalization rates, this patient group appears to be particularly difficult to treat and, from a health economic perspective, constitutes a major challenge. The Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy (CBASP) is the only psychotherapy specifically tailored for PDD developed. Originally developed as an outpatient treatment by James P. McCullough, CBASP has been modified for the severely ill PDD patients with TR as a multimodal inpatient concept. Pilot studies indicate very good feasibility and promising outcome. Therefore, a randomized controlled trial is now mandatory for testing the superiority of the inpatient CBASP program vs. the evidence-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), the 'gold standard' in depression treatment. Behavioral Activation (BA) was chosen as the control intervention because BA, as a specific variant of CBT, is at least as effective as standard CBT in severely depressed patients while being easier to train and implement in inpatient settings. Both therapies will be applied as a treatment-phase program (5-week inpatient and dayclinic acute treatment followed by 6-week outpatient continuation group-treatment) in combination with standardized and guideline-based pharmacotherapy. The proposed prospective, multi-center, randomized study with 396 PDD patients with TR will therefore address the primary research question: Is the CBASP program more effective than the BA program in this patient group? The primary hypothesis is that after 16 weeks of treatment, CBASP will show a significant superiority over BA in reducing depressive symptoms. In addition, the important psychotherapy research question: what works for whom and why? will be addressed. Moderator analyses will examine whether childhood maltreatment and methylation of exon IV of the BDNF gene have an impact on the differential efficacy of the treatments. Regarding mediator analyses, it will be examined whether symptom improvements can be explained by an amelioration of interpersonal problems in CBASP and an increase of activity levels in BA. A follow-up survey 48 weeks after the end of the interventions will provide valuable results regarding the long-term outcome of the treatments. Finally, the health economic potential of the interventions will be investigated through cost-benefit analyses in order to provide important information on the cost-effectiveness of implementation in routine care for health policy. Thus, the results of this study will have the potential to relieve the burden of this very serious and cost-intensive disorder while improving human health. In addition, moderator and mediator analyses may guide personalized treatment and enable therapists to more specifically address psychotherapeutic needs of individual PDD patients in the future.

Conditions

• Persistent Depressive Disorder
• Treatment-resistant Depression

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	inpatient CBASP individual therapy	During the 5-week inpatient phase I and the 5-week inpatient phase II / dayclinic treatment all patients in this arm will receive 2 individual CBASP therapy sessions (duration: 50 min per session).
BEHAVIORAL	inpatient CBASP group therapy	During the 5-week inpatient phase I and the 5-week inpatient phase II / dayclinic treatment all patients in this arm will receive 2 CBASP group therapy sessions (duration: 100 min per session).
BEHAVIORAL	inpatient CBASP nurse contact	During the 5-week inpatient phase I and the 5-week inpatient phase II / dayclinic treatment all patients in this arm will receive 1 CBASP nurse contact (duration: 30 min per session).
BEHAVIORAL	inpatient CBASP exercise therapy	During the 5-week inpatient phase I and the 5-week inpatient phase II / dayclinic treatment all patients in this arm will receive 1 CBASP exercise therapy (duration: 75 min per session).
BEHAVIORAL	outpatient CBASP group therapy	During the 6-week outpatient treatment all patients in this arm will receive 1 CBASP group therapy session (duration: 100 min per session).
BEHAVIORAL	inpatient BA individual therapy	During the 5-week inpatient phase I and the 5-week inpatient phase II / dayclinic treatment all patients in this arm will receive 2 individual BA therapy sessions (duration: 50 min per session).
BEHAVIORAL	inpatient BA group therapy	During the 5-week inpatient phase I and the 5-week inpatient phase II / dayclinic treatment all patients in this arm will receive 2 BA group therapy sessions (duration: 100 min per session).
BEHAVIORAL	inpatient BA nurse contact	During the 5-week inpatient phase I and the 5-week inpatient phase II / dayclinic treatment all patients in this arm will receive 1 BA nurse contact (duration: 30 min per session)
BEHAVIORAL	inpatient BA exercise therapy	During the 5-week inpatient phase I and the 5-week inpatient phase II / dayclinic treatment all patients in this arm will receive 1 BA exercise therapy (duration: 75 min per session).
BEHAVIORAL	outpatient BA group therapy	During the 6-week outpatient treatment all patients in this arm will receive 1 BA group therapy session (duration: 100 min per session).
DRUG	algorithm-based study medication	All patients will receive an optimized, algorithm-based antidepressant medication following the current S3-Guidelines on Unipolar Depression. In case of nonresponse: * 1st line dose escalation (if appropriate) * 2nd line lithium augmentation * 3rd line augmentation with 2nd generation antipsychotics or evidence-based combinations of antidepressants * 4th line change of antidepressant.

Timeline

• Start date: 2021-12-01
• Primary completion: 2024-07-01
• Completion: 2026-05-01
• First posted: 2021-08-09
• Last updated: 2023-10-12

Locations

6 sites across 1 country: Germany