Behavioral Activation and Emotion-focused Interventions in the Treatment of Depression

The study is a single-case intervention study, evaluating effects of the treatment Behavioral activation and emotion-focused interventions for depression.

Research question and hypothesis

1. What is the effect of behavioural activation and emotion-focused interventions on patients' ratings of depressive symptoms, behavioural activation and emotion regulation difficulties?
2. What is the effect of behavioural activation and emotion-focused interventions on patients' overall psychiatric state, with regards to ratings of anxiety, quality of life, level of functioning?
3. How does patient ratings of behavioural activation and emotion regulation difficulties and skills change during the course of treatment, in relation to treatment/session content?

Procedure The study will be carried out by the authors or experienced clinicians (master level students at the Psychotherapy program at the Karolinska Institute), recruiting and treating patients with recurring depression at a primary care unit in the Stockholm region. 7 patients will be treated during 15 weeks. The treatment will be carried out in a blended format with an internet-based treatment supported with therapist face-to-face sessions. The initial behavioural activation phase lasts up to 6 weeks followed by additional emotion focused interventions. The treatment is initiated by a therapist session, thereafter therapist sessions are planned approximately every 3rd week.

To be included in the study participants must meet diagnostic criteria for depression as their primary problem according to DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual), have basic reading and writing skills in Swedish, and not express acute suicidal ideation. Patients with concurrent co-morbid psychiatric problems are eligible for inclusion unless another psychiatric diagnosis is assessed as primary to depression. Patients will be recruited from the regular flow of patients who seek treatment for psychological problems in the selected clinic. If interested they will be contacted by the study therapists and screened and assessed for eligibility after signing an informed consent.

Participants meeting inclusion criteria and not exclusion criteria will be offered participation in the study, and randomized to one of the 7 baseline lengths.

Methodology/approach/data analysis The research question will be investigated using a multiple baseline single-case A-B design. A will be the baseline phase, varying between 7 and 14 days, assessing the pattern of depression, behavioral activation and difficulties in emotion regulation before the intervention. Phase B comprise behavioral activation and emotion focused interventions as the independent variable and makes it possible to evaluate the effect of treatment on the dependent variable depressive symptoms. The B-phase will last 15 weeks and include the full internet-based treatment supported with 5-10 face-to-face therapist sessions .

Single-case experimental design (SCED) is particularly useful when evaluating a novel treatment in a clinical context as it produces reliable results even with a small sample size. Also, it is particularly helpful for studying the details of how the intervention works for each individual patient, through detailed and repeated measures of several dependent variables and processes. It is recommended that the effect of the intervention is assessed in at least 3 individuals (1), however, we will recruit at least 7 participants to allow for higher statistical power and as a safety measure for drop out and missing data.

Primary treatment effects in terms of depression, behavioural activation and emotion regulation will be assessed daily from day of inclusion to end of follow-up, with brief versions of self-rated measures with good reliability and validity. Brief versions of the following scales will be used for the daily assessment; depressive symptoms PHQ-2 (2), difficulties in emotion regulation, and daily behavioural activation BADS (3). Longitudinal data will be analyzed with non-parametric statistical tests (1). Visual inspection will be used to analyse variability, trends and patterns of change in the daily assessments over the phases of treatment.

Kendal's Tau is a non-overlap statistical test that has been developed for analysing SCED time series data with adequate statistical power. It will be used to analyse statistical differences in the dependent variables between phases. Kendal's Tau will be complemented with Tau-U tests if there are statistical trends in the data-series. Statistical power is very difficult to calculate for this test but given the expected medium effect sizes of the interventions and the replication across five participants, the statistical power is assessed as adequate. Pre, post and follow-up data will be assessed at start of phase A, start of phase B, after phase B and at follow up 3 months post treatment. The measures used will be PHQ-9 (4) for depression, GAD-7 (5) for anxiety symptoms, WSAS (6) for disability and ISI (7) for symptoms of insomnia. To measure if the treatment affects emotion regulation, self-ratings of DERS 16 (8) will be used. Post treatment the CSQ-8 (9) will be used to assess treatment satisfaction and NEQ (10) to asses negative effects.

Eligibility Criteria:
Inclusion Criteria:

* meet diagnostic criteria for depression as their primary problem according to DSM-5
* have basic reading and writing skills in Swedish
* not express acute suicidal ideation

Exclusion Criteria:

* concurrent comorbid psychiatric problems assessed as primary to depression.