Efficacy of Transdiagnostic Treatments: A Review of Published Outcome Studies and Future Research Directions

Abstract

Theory and evidence relating to biological and psychological vulnerabilities, comorbidity, latent structure, cognitive and behavioral maintaining factors, and treatment outcome suggest that commonalities across emotional disorders may outweigh the differences. Thus, researchers have recently begun evaluating transdiagnostic (or unified) treatment protocols, which target common maintaining factors, by applying them to individuals with multiple disorders or to mixeddiagnosis groups. The aim of this article is to review the efficacy of unified protocols for anxiety and mood disorders. Evidence suggests that unified treatments are associated with symptom improvement, generally perform better than wait-list controls, are associated with improvements in comorbid disorders, and may compare well to diagnosis-specific treatments. Unified protocols are also associated with high client satisfaction, therapeutic alliance, group cohesion, and positive treatment expectations. However, these conclusions are tempered by the small number of studies and methodological limitations. We propose directions for future research.

Specific Language Impairment and Perspective Taking: Delayed Development of Theory of Mind, Visual and Emotional Perspective Taking

“…In this respect, recently developed transdiagnostic treatment approaches for anxiety and depression disorders in children and adolescents would be valuable [26]. In brief, transdiagnostic approaches focus on common factors that produce symptoms in related classes of disorders, such as anxiety and depression, thereby addressing multiple concerns or disorders within an individual [27].…”

The Applicability and Efficacy of Transdiagnostic Cognitive Behavior Therapy on Reducing Signs and Symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder With Co-Occurring Emotional Disorders: A Pilot Study

“…This protocol emphasis on emotion regulation process and one of its main goals is to help patients learn to better understand their emotional experiences, in the other words, this program is attempts to help patients tolerate their "uncomfortable" emotions (10). Many researches have investigated the efficacy of this program in different conditions of axis I psychiatric disorders (11,12) and it's efficacy has been confirmed in some review and meta-analysis studies (13)(14)(15). Although, limited research has been conducted in other cultures, such as the Iranian culture (16)(17)(18).…”

Eficacia de la terapia cognitivo conductual transdiagnóstica en el tratamiento de la ansiedad y la depresión en adultos, niños y adolescentes: Un meta-análisis

“…A transdiagnostic process has been defi ned as "a major factor that can explain the maintenance of numerous disorders that an individual may experience" (Egan, Wade, & Shafran, 2012). In a similar vein, transdiagnostic treatments are "those that apply the same underlying treatment principles across mental disorders without tailoring the protocol to specifi c diagnoses" (McEvoy, Nathan, & Norton, 2009). Thus, in contrast with disorder-specifi c CBT, transdiagnostic cognitive-behavioral therapy (T-CBT) could be defi ned as a CBT therapy that is applied to a number of different specifi c disorders that share commonalities in cognitive, behavioral, and/or emotional areas of dysregulation (Sandín et al, 2012).…”

“…In the last few years, new research has emerged on the effi cacy of T-CBT. Apart from certain systematic reviews (McEvoy et al, 2009;McManus et al, 2010), a few recent meta-analyses have examined the effectiveness of T-CBT for emotional disorders. Three of these examined the effi cacy of T-CBT in adult samples focusing on anxiety (Norton & Philipp, 2008;Reinholt & Krogh, 2014) or on anxiety and depression (Newby, McKinnon, Kuyken, Gilbody, & Dalgleish, 2015).…”