Journal of consulting and clinical psychology最新文献

Several researchers who have evaluated Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) wrote a commentary arguing that the group-delivered IPT treatment for eating disorders that we adapted and used in a recent trial (Stice, Rohde, et al., 2023) was less effective than the new dissonance-based eating disorder treatment (Body Project Treatment) because the group-delivered IPT did not contain all core elements, was not developmentally appropriate, was not tailored for people with eating disorders, and because our team lacked sufficient IPT expertise. In response, we note that the group-delivered IPT that we evaluated produced higher abstinence from binge eating and compensatory weight control behaviors (40%) than did individually delivered IPT in the only trial that also evaluated this treatment with a broad range of eating disorders (33%; Fairburn et al., 2015). The fact that the group-delivered IPT produced a higher abstinence rate than individually delivered IPT for a similar spectrum of patients appears to refute the stated concerns regarding the group-delivered version of IPT because it was not less effective than individually delivered IPT. We argue it is critical to establish that a treatment significantly outperforms alternative treatments with a distinct intervention target because only an active comparator controls for the potential confounds that can drive improvement in trials, including expectancies, demand characteristics, and nonspecific therapeutic effects. We also note that IPT for the treatment of eating disorders has not significantly outperformed three alternative treatments and that the evidence base for IPT may thus be driven by expectancies, demand characteristics, and nonspecific effects. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Traditionally, psychotherapy distinguishes between "common factors" and "specific mechanisms." Common factors can be defined as "unrecognized factors in any therapeutic situation-factors that may be even more important than those being purposely employed." Specific mechanisms, by contrast, are deliberately targeted by given therapeutic approaches as the primary drivers of change. This distinction is based on the implicit assumption that each therapeutic ingredient fits exclusively into one of these categories. In this viewpoint, the author argues that the common versus specific dichotomy is both arbitrary and potentially detrimental. It risks preventing clinicians from using specific techniques to target some of the most effective therapeutic mechanisms identified in research. The trait-like and state-like theoretical framework has demonstrated that the term "common factor" is less useful as a fixed attribute and it is more productive to consider it as one potential role that mechanisms may play, alongside their ability to function as specific mechanisms targeted directly to drive state-like therapeutic change. This shift parallels the evolution from viewing individual characteristics as pure traits (e.g., personality traits) or states (e.g., emotional states) to recognizing them as coexisting dimensions of the same construct: Personality traits can display state-like fluctuations across time and contexts, while emotional states may follow stable trait-like patterns over time. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective: To investigate if Sessions 1-4 Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) scores are associated with treatment outcome and if there is a differential effect between person-centered experiential therapy (PCET) and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

Method: A secondary data analysis of a prospectively registered and ethically approved pragmatic, noninferiority randomized controlled trial comparing PCET and CBT for the treatment of moderate or severe depression. Latent growth curve modeling was applied to data from 274 patients who received ≥ five sessions of therapy to investigate the association between change in Sessions 1-4 PHQ-9 scores on a binary end-of-treatment outcome (i.e., reliable and clinically significant improvement; RCSI) and on final-session PHQ-9 scores. Estimated power was 80%.

Results: Change in Sessions 1-4 PHQ-9 scores was significantly associated with the probability of RCSI in the PCET condition (p = .002) but not the CBT condition (p = .156). Specifically, greater early treatment improvement and higher PHQ-9 scores at Session 1 were significantly associated with obtaining RCSI in PCET, but not in CBT; this relationship differed significantly between conditions (p = .007). Greater early treatment improvement was also significantly associated with lower final-session PHQ-9 scores (p < .001), but this relationship did not significantly differ across conditions (p = .121).

Conclusions: Early session scores are associated with final-session depression scores, though PCET and CBT manifest distinctively different trajectories for patients achieving RCSI. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective: In this commentary, we outline conceptual and methodological concerns we have with a recent randomized trial of two group-delivered transdiagnostic eating disorder treatments (Stice et al., 2023), particularly regarding the description, implementation, and labeling of the comparison condition.

Method: We discuss the selection of a control condition in comparative psychotherapy trials; the distinction between adaptations and other types of intervention modifications; the need for processes to ensure that an intervention is developmentally and diagnostically appropriate; and the provision of detailed descriptions of interventions in articles and supplementary materials, as well as making manuals publicly available, to ensure that reviewers and readers can understand the interventions delivered and can accurately interpret the results.

Results: We highlight the potential downstream implications of mislabeling an intervention and conclude that the comparison condition in Stice et al.'s (2023) article should be reclassified to avoid misinterpretation.

Conclusions: There are published frameworks and guidelines available that promote more detail, precision, and transparency about interventions being tested in clinical trials. We believe it is time for journals to implement these guidelines to ensure that reviewers and readers can fully understand what interventions were tested to draw informed conclusions from the study, replicate research findings, and reliably deliver these interventions in clinical practice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).