The current study examined the feasibility and effectiveness of transporting an empirically supported treatment for depression, cognitive therapy (CT), to a community mental health center setting. CT was delivered to 192 adult outpatients with major depression, and a benchmarking strategy compared results with those of 2 randomized controlled trials (RCTs). The 3 samples were largely similar in terms of initial severity of depression, and CT was as effective in reducing depressive symptoms in the current sample as in the RCTs. More favorable outcome was associated with less severe initial depression, more therapy sessions, more years of education, and absence of a comorbid personality disorder. This study demonstrates that an empirically supported treatment can be transported effectively to a clinical setting.

Self-system therapy (SST) is a new therapy based on regulatory focus theory (E. T. Higgins, 1997) for depressed individuals unable to pursue promotion goals effectively. The authors conducted a randomized trial comparing SST with cognitive therapy (CT) in a sample of 45 patients with a range of depressive symptoms to test 2 hypotheses: that SST would be more efficacious for depressed individuals characterized by inadequate socialization toward pursuing promotion goals and that SST would lead to greater reduction in dysphoric responses to priming of promotion goals. There was no overall difference in efficacy between treatments, but patients whose socialization history lacked an emphasis on promotion goals showed significantly greater improvement with SST. In addition, SST patients showed a greater reduction in dysphoric responses to promotion goal priming than did CT patients. The results illustrate the value of a theory-based translational approach to treatment design and selection.

No abstract

Acquisition of the classically conditioned eyeblink response is generally regarded as one of the most basic forms of associative learning. A great deal is known about how the brain encodes this simple form of learning, so that performance of this task may be an indirect indicator of brain functioning. Individual differences in response acquisition have been revealed, but largely ignored, in the research literature. We tested the temporal stability and familial origins of these individual differences using a classic twin study design. Results reveal substantial individual differences in acquisition of the conditioned eyeblink response. These differences are stable across brief retest, and differences in response acquisition exhibit familial aggregation, apparently due, in part, to genetic resemblance.