Rumination-focused CBT Training for the Prevention of Depression and Anxiety

VU University of Amsterdam

Status and phase: Completed; Phase 1

Conditions: Depression; Anxiety Disorders

Treatments: Behavioral: Rumination Focused CBT

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01223677

50-50105-96-635

Details and patient eligibility

About

Depression and anxiety disorders are highly prevalent and associated with reduced quality of life for patients and enormous economic costs for society. Although effective treatments are available, a substantial number of patients fail to respond, and the time between disorder onset and treatment is typically long. The development of prevention programs therefore appears promising. The current project aims to prevent depression and anxiety by targeting excessive levels of worry and rumination, two important risk factors for emotional disorders. Participants will be selected on the basis of a high score on two validated questionnaires on worry and rumination. They will be randomly assigned to a rumination-focused cognitive-behavioral training delivered in a group format, a rumination-focused cognitive-behavioral training delivered via internet, or a no-training control condition. It is expected that both versions of the rumination-focused training will reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety, will reduce the incidence of major depressive episodes and generalized anxiety disorder, and will reduce symptom levels of other emotional disorders.

Full description

see above

Enrollment: 251 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 15 to 22 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• A score above the 75% and 66.7% percentile on two validated self-report measures of rumination and worry, the Ruminative Response Scale of the Response Style Questionnaire (RSQ; Nolen-Hoeksema & Morrow, 1991), and the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ; Meyer et al. 1990).

Exclusion criteria

• A score indicating fulfillment of DSM-IV criteria for depression or generalized anxiety disorder according to the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9; Kroenke, Spitzer, & Williams, 2001) or the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire-IV (GADQ-IV; Newman et al., 2002)

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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251 participants in 3 patient groups

rumination focused CBT

Active Comparator group

Description:

RFCBT-group. This group training is based on research showing that dysfunctional forms of rumination are characterized by an abstract evaluative style of processing, whereas functional forms of of processing are more concrete and process-focused. The training uses psycho-education, functional analysis, group discussion, experiential exercises and behavioral experiments to facilitate the shift from dysfunctional ruminative thinking to a more helpful concrete thinking style.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Rumination Focused CBT

rumination focused CBT (online)

Active Comparator group

Description:

The online training is based on research showing that dysfunctional forms of rumination are characterized by an abstract evaluative style of processing, whereas functional forms of of processing are more concrete and process-focused. The training uses psycho-education, functional analysis, experiential exercises and behavioral experiments to facilitate the shift from dysfunctional ruminative thinking to a more helpful concrete thinking style.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Rumination Focused CBT

No training control group

No Intervention group

Description:

No training control group. Participants within this condition received no treatment, but only filled out the outcome measures at each measurement period.