Efficacy Evaluation of a Unified Transdiagnostic Treatment for Anxiety Disorders
Completed · Not applicable
Conditions studied: Anxiety Disorders, Mood Disorders
In brief
Anxiety disorders are common, chronic, costly, debilitating to quality of life, and are more prevalent than any other class of disorders in every country in the world where surveys have been taken. Deepening understanding of the nature of anxiety and related emotional disorders during the last decade has revealed that commonalities in etiology and latent structure among these disorders supersedes differences. At the same time, examination of extant single diagnosis psychological treatment protocols (SDPs) for these disorders underscores mechanistic similarities. These findings suggested the possibility of distilling a set of psychological procedures that would comprise an innovative Unified Protocol for Transdiagnostic Treatment of Emotional Disorders (UP), and this protocol has now been developed. If efficacious, the UP may represent a more efficient and possibly more effective strategy which would render treatment implications of comorbidity, not otherwise specified (NOS) and subdefinitional threshold anxiety disorder conditions moot. The investigators now propose an evaluation of the efficacy of the UP in a group of patients with heterogeneous anxiety disorders by way of rigorous comparisons to existing evidence based SDPs benchmarked against a wait list control condition, using both statistical equivalence and superiority analyses. Additional aims include determining the durability of the UP relative to comparison conditions after treatment discontinuation, and ascertaining the differential impact of treatments on disorder specific symptoms vs. higher-order temperamental variables. Further analyses will indicate if changes in these higher order temperamental variables mediate long-term outcome as preliminary data suggests, and if this mechanism of action differs among treatments.
Key facts
- Study ID
- NCT01243606
- Run by
- Boston University Charles River Campus
- People needed
- 250
- Starts
- 2010-12-01
- Expected to finish
- 2017-05-01
- Last updated by the study team
- 2017-10-09
Who can join
Age: 18 and older. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: not accepted.
You may qualify if…
- For inclusion, subjects will be males and females 18 years or older, fluent in the English language who have a principal DSM-IV diagnosis of SAD, PD/A, GAD, or OCD. In addition, to be eligible for participation, individuals must be willing to refrain from initiating additional treatment during the course of therapy unless mutually agreed upon with the therapists and the principal investigator; and willing to be randomly assigned to treatment conditions.
You may not qualify if…
- Patients will be excluded if they meet any of the following criteria:
- Current DSM-IV diagnosis of bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, or organic mental disorder.
- Clear and current suicidal risk.
- Current or recent (past 90 days) history of substance abuse or drug dependence, with the exception of nicotine, marijuana, and caffeine.
- Individuals will also be excluded if they previously received an adequate trial of CBT or if their emotional symptomatology is due to a medical/physical condition in which case alternative treatment would be clinically indicated.
Where it is running
- Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders at Boston University — Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov
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