PCBH With the Addition of Self-help CBT

Summary

The overarching goal of primary care is to offer all patients individualized and context-sensitive healthcare with high access and continuity. One of the reasons primary care struggles with this goal is that many patients suffer from mental health problems, while there is a lack of psychosocial resources as well as clear pathways for these patients.

Primary care behavioural health (PCBH, in Swedish IBH) is an innovative way of organizing primary care, where psychosocial resources have more and shorter visits, strive for same-day access, and have an active consulting role in the primary care team. To help patients with achieving relevant behavior changes, so called Brief Interventions are used. However, these interventions have not been systematically evaluated in the same way that CBT has, and there is a risk that patients that would have benefitted from structured CBT are undertreated.

This study is a pilot study preparing for a large multicenter study that will be conducted starting in late 2020. The investigators want to find out if an addition of an extended evaluation and possibility of treatment with guided CBT self-help can increase the treatment effects of PCBH on patient functioning and symptoms, compared to standard PCBH with a contextual assessment and brief interventions. In the process, the investigators are also conducting one of the first RCT on brief interventions. As this is a pilot study, the feasibility of implementing the study protocol in regular healthcare is also tested in order to collect high-quality data while creating minimal disturbance in the centers' ordinary routines.

PCBH has the potential to increase the quality of care for patients with mental health problems. This study is the first to step towards answering the question if the effects of brief intervention are large enough to merit large-scale implementation, and if an add-on of other brief and easily implemented treatments can increase them.

Conditions

• Depression, Anxiety
• Quality of Life
• Psychological Distress
• Activities, Daily Living
• Insomnia
• Stress

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Brief interventions

'Brief Interventions' (BI) is a generic term for a multitude of tools and interventions used in patient visits within PCBH. BI start immediately at the initial consultation, which ends with a personally tailored and evidence-informed plan adjusted to the patient's context. As such, there is no separation between assessment and intervention. The interventions within BI often have their foundation in CBT, ACT or MI. The common theme is that they are principle-based rather than manual-based and focus on behavioral change in relation to a problem that is perceived both possible to affect and relevant to the patient, rather than focusing on a specific diagnosis or condition. Follow-up appointments are scheduled flexibly depending on the patient's perceived need. Usually a BI treatment consists of 1-4 appointments with several weeks apart and ends when the patient feels that they are moving in the right direction.

BEHAVIORAL

Guided self-help CBT

The patient receives a previously scientifically evaluated CBT-based self-help book for one of the following conditions: depression, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, social anxiety, health anxiety, insomnia, or stress/burnout. The therapist support consists of 3-6 contacts throughout the 6-12 weeks long intervention period as decided by the clinician and patient together, as long as at least one and not more than three are physical visits at the center and the rest via phone, video conferencing, or secure internet messages. Clinicians delivering shCBT will need four days of reading and two days of training to be able to make initial assessments and problem profiling and use the self-help books.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Kronoberg County Council

  collaborator OTHER_GOV

• Capio Group

  collaborator OTHER

• Linnaeus University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Viktor Kaldo, Professor · Linnaeus University

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2019-02-04

Primary Completion

2020-06-15

Completion

2020-06-15

Countries

• Sweden

Study Locations