Effectiveness of the Unified Protocol on symptoms of anxiety and depression in Mexican adults.

Abstract

Emotional disorders, such as anxiety and depression, represent a public health problem worldwide due to the impact they have on the quality of life of the people who suffer from it. Clinical psychology began to develop various interventions for the specific treatment of each of them. However, research and clinical practice have shown the practical limitations that this entails. Due to this, various research groups began to develop transdiagnostic interventions such as the Unified Protocol (UP) to overcome these limitations. Objective: This article reports the effectiveness of the PU in face-to-face mode in users of a civil association (n=3) who presented symptoms of anxiety and depression. Method: An intrasubject design was carried out with pre and post treatment measurements and visual inspection. The instruments used were the PHQ-9, GAD-7, DERS-E, ODIS and OASIS. An analysis was performed through the objective clinical change (OCC). Results: a decrease in the scores was observed in the three participants in the PHQ-9, GAD-7, DERS-E, which was compared with the downward trend in the ODSIS and OASIS scores. Conclusion: the intervention was clinically significant for the participants and evidenced the flexibility in the application of the PU, however, the main limitations were the size of the sample, the lack of instruments that measure aspects of personality, a dimension that has been used in other research as an indicator of change and a follow-up evaluation.