Telepsychology-Service Delivery for Depressed Elderly Veterans

Completed · Not applicable

Conditions studied: Depression, Elderly

In brief

The purpose of this study is to see whether therapy for elderly adults with major depression can be delivered effectively using videoconferencing technology ("telepsychology"), which allows a therapist and patient who are not in the same room as one another to communicate. We are interested in learning if this form of mental health service delivery is an acceptable alternative to traditional face-to-face therapy delivered with the therapist in the same room as the patient.

Key facts

Study ID

NCT00324701

Run by

US Department of Veterans Affairs

People needed

241

Starts

2006-09-01

Expected to finish

2012-10-01

Last updated by the study team

2015-04-24

Who can join

Age: 60 and older. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: not accepted.

You may qualify if…

• Participants will be older male and female veterans,
• age 60 and above,
• with diagnoses of major depressive disorder (MDD) assigned on the basis of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID; Spitzer et al., 1997).

You may not qualify if…

• Actively psychotic or demented persons,
• individuals with both suicidal ideation and clear intent, and
• individuals meeting criteria for substance dependence will be excluded from participation.
• However, in order to maximize generalization of results, presence of other forms of psychopathology will not be a basis for exclusion. All of these structured interviews will be audiotaped in order to calculate inter-rater reliability on a randomly selected 20%. (See Human Subjects for procedures in place for suicidal participants or potential participants).

Where it is running

• Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center, Charleston, SC — Charleston, South Carolina, United States

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

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