Maintenance of gains following experiential therapies for depression.

Abstract

Follow-up data across an 18-month period are presented for 43 adults who had been randomly assigned and had responded to short-term client-centered (CC) and emotion-focused (EFT) therapies for major depression. Long-term effects of these short-term therapies were evaluated using relapse rates, number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic weeks, survival times across an 18-month follow-up, and group comparisons on self-report indices at 6- and 18-month follow-up among those clients who responded to the acute treatment phase. EFT treatment showed superior effects across 18 months in terms of less depressive relapse and greater number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic weeks, and the probability of maintaining treatment gains was significantly more likely in the EFT treatment than in the CC treatment. In addition, follow-up self-report results demonstrated significantly greater effects for EFT clients on reduction of depression and improvement of self-esteem, and there were trends in favor of EFT, in comparison with CC, on reduction of general symptom distress and interpersonal problems. Maintenance of treatment gains following an empathic relational treatment appears to be enhanced by the addition of specific experiential and gestalt-derived emotion-focused interventions. Clinical and theoretical implications of these findings are presented.

Emotion-Focused Therapy and Dietary Counseling for Obese Patients with Binge Eating Disorder: A Propensity Score-Adjusted Study

“…This is achieved by exploring beliefs associated with the experienced emotion and by identifying the needs that can motivate change in personal meanings and beliefs. EFT trials showed promising results with respect to both acute response and subsequent prevention of depressive symptoms [5]. Despite these promising findings, no study is available so far on the utility of EFT in the treatment of BED associated with obesity.…”

Emotion Regulation Skills Training Enhances the Efficacy of Inpatient Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Major Depressive Disorder: A Randomized Controlled Trial

“…Finally, interventions that focus on enhancing ER, such as emotion-focused therapy [46], dialectical behavioral therapy [47] and exposure-based cognitive therapy [48] have been shown to be effective in MDD [48,49,50,51,52,53,54]. …”

START (STrAtegies for RelaTives) study: a pragmatic randomised controlled trial to determine the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a manual-based coping strategy programme in promoting the mental health of carers of people with dementia

“…68 Similarly, a RCT of a 'coping with depression' psychoeducational group programme, with booster session up to 4 months after the intervention had finished, was effective in reducing depression at 6 months but not at 12 months. 69 In contrast, a RCT of CBT as an adjuvant therapy for treatment-resistant depression found that it was effective at the 6-and 12-month follow-up. 70 Ten therapist-delivered sessions of CBT over the internet were effective in reducing depression at 4 and 8 months (equivalent to our short-term measures).…”