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Attentional Control as a Predictor of Response to Psychological Treatment for Depression and Relapse up to 1 year After Treatment: A Pilot Cohort Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2018

J.E.J. Buckman*
Affiliation:
Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT iCope – Camden and Islington Psychological Therapies Services, Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust, St Pancras Hospital, 4 St Pancras Way, London NW1 0PE
R. Saunders
Affiliation:
Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT
P. Fearon
Affiliation:
Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT
J. Leibowitz
Affiliation:
iCope – Camden and Islington Psychological Therapies Services, Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust, St Pancras Hospital, 4 St Pancras Way, London NW1 0PE
S. Pilling
Affiliation:
Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT iCope – Camden and Islington Psychological Therapies Services, Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust, St Pancras Hospital, 4 St Pancras Way, London NW1 0PE
*
Correspondence to Dr Joshua E.J. Buckman, Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT. E-mail: joshua.buckman@ucl.ac.uk
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Abstract

Background: Identifying depressed patients unlikely to reach remission and those likely to relapse after reaching remission is of great importance, but there are few pre-treatment factors that can help clinicians predict prognosis and together these explain relatively little variance in treatment outcomes. Attentional control has shown promise in studies to date, but has not been investigated prospectively in routine clinical settings with depressed patients. Aims: This study aimed to pilot the use of a brief self-report measure of attentional control in routine care and investigate the associations between attentional control, psychological treatment response and relapse to depression up to 1 year post-treatment. Method: Depressed patients were recruited from two primary care psychological treatment (IAPT) services and completed the Attentional Control Scale (ACS) alongside routine symptom measures at every therapy session. Participants were tracked and followed up for 1 year post-treatment. Results: Baseline ACS scores were associated with remission and residual depressive symptoms post-treatment, and relapse within 12 months of ending treatment, all independent of pre-treatment depressive symptom severity, and the latter also independent of residual symptoms. Conclusion: A self-report measure of attentional control can potentially be used to predict levels of depressive symptoms post-treatment and can contribute to predicting risk of relapse to depression in IAPT services, without affecting rates of therapy completion/drop-out or data completion of standard IAPT measures. However, this pilot study had a small overall sample size and a very small number of observed relapses, so replication in a larger study is needed before firm conclusions can be made.

Information

Type
Research Article
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies 2018
Figure 0

Table 1. Demographic and baseline clinical characteristics of pilot study participants and population of attendees at the IAPT services over the study period

Figure 1

Figure 1. Participant flow throughout study.

Figure 2

Table 2. Relationship between baseline ACS score and each of the primary and secondary outcomes

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