Efficacy Evaluation of a Unified Transdiagnostic Treatment for Anxiety Disorders

Summary

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.

Conditions

• Anxiety Disorders
• Mood Disorders

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Single Diagnosis Treatment Protocol

SDPs include: Managing Social Anxiety: A CBT Approach; Mastery of Anxiety and Panic-IV; Mastery of Anxiety and Worry-II; and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A CBT Approach

BEHAVIORAL

Unified Protocol (UP)

The UP is designed to help patients learn how to confront and experience uncomfortable emotions and learn how to respond to their emotions in more adaptive ways. Individual treatment sessions will be conducted by experienced clinicians who will be trained in the administration of this protocol. A workbook will be provided to each patient as part of this manualized treatment. Treatment and session length of the UP will be matched to the SDPs for each principal diagnosis (see description above).

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

  collaborator NIH

• Boston University Charles River Campus

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• David H Barlow, Ph.D. · Boston University

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2010-12-31

Primary Completion

2017-05-31

Completion

2017-05-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations