Advancing psychotherapy and evidence‐based psychological interventions

Abstract

Psychological models of mental disorders guide research into psychological and environmental factors that elicit and maintain mental disorders as well as interventions to reduce them. This paper addresses four areas. (1) Psychological models of mental disorders have become increasingly transdiagnostic, focusing on core cognitive endophenotypes of psychopathology from an integrative cognitive psychology perspective rather than offering explanations for unitary mental disorders. It is argued that psychological interventions for mental disorders will increasingly target specific cognitive dysfunctions rather than symptom-based mental disorders as a result. (2) Psychotherapy research still lacks a comprehensive conceptual framework that brings together the wide variety of findings, models and perspectives. Analysing the state-of-the-art in psychotherapy treatment research, "component analyses" aiming at an optimal identification of core ingredients and the mechanisms of change is highlighted as the core need towards improved efficacy and effectiveness of psychotherapy, and improved translation to routine care. (3) In order to provide more effective psychological interventions to children and adolescents, there is a need to develop new and/or improved psychotherapeutic interventions on the basis of developmental psychopathology research taking into account knowledge of mediators and moderators. Developmental neuroscience research might be instrumental to uncover associated aberrant brain processes in children and adolescents with mental health problems and to better examine mechanisms of their correction by means of psychotherapy and psychological interventions. (4) Psychotherapy research needs to broaden in terms of adoption of large-scale public health strategies and treatments that can be applied to more patients in a simpler and cost-effective way. Increased research on efficacy and moderators of Internet-based treatments and e-mental health tools (e.g. to support "real time" clinical decision-making to prevent treatment failure or relapse) might be one promising way forward.

Internet-based treatment of depression

“…Psychological treatments are considered to be one of the most important interventions to contribute to a reduction of the disease burden of depressive disorders [5 ]. Most patients in Western countries prefer psychological treatment above pharmacological treatments [6].…”

Desenvolvimento de protocolos para acompanhamento de psicoterapia pela Internet

“…Os dois estudos em psicoterapia online desenvolvidos no Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicologia da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul ilustram esforços para que avancemos no conhecimento do entrelaçamen-to entre psicoterapia e Internet. A incorporação da tecnologia digital em tratamentos psicoterá-picos destaca-se como uma tendência internacional na psicoterapia (Emmelkamp et al, 2014;Norcross et al, 2013), e uma correlata agenda de pesquisa vem se constituindo na área. Nossos primeiros passos nesse sentido apontam para a complexidade e a possibilidade do desenvolvimento de protocolos de psicoterapia online, seja na modalidade de videoconferência ou na de programas de computador.…”

“…Por um lado, investigações de programas computadorizados de terapia e de aplicativos terapêuti-cos da rede são encorajadas por uma tendência da pesquisa em psicoterapia de se estudarem intervenções simples, de baixo custo, e que possam beneficiar um maior número de indivíduos (Emmelkamp et al, 2014). Por outro, os estudos da psicoterapia online realizada por psicólogos desenvolvem-se com o objetivo de aprimorar uma prática que já vem sendo amplamente oferecida, e seus resultados são convertidos em treino de psicoterapeutas e regulamentação dos serviços psicológicos prestados na rede.…”

Panic Disorder and Agoraphobia Across the Lifespan

“…Future research will also likely include transdiagnostic models of psychology focusing on cognitive endophenotypes of psychopathology from an integrative cognitive psychology perspective (Emmelkamp et al, 2014). For example, emotion dysregulation (Hofmann et al, 2012) and rumination or repetitive thinking (Ehring and Watkins, 2008) are implicated across various mood and anxiety disorders.…”