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PI's: Professor Peter Fonagy, Professor Alessandra Lemma, Professor Mary Target, Professor Stephen Pilling, Professor Anthony Roth, Tara McFarquhar
Contact: sally.parkinson@annafreud.org
REDIT is designed to investigate the effectiveness of Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy
(DIT) as a depression treatment within Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) services. The study will compare the outcomes of patients diagnosed with depression who are receiving immediate DIT, with those of patients on an enhanced wait list. The aim is to recruit 100 adults with a depressive illness, aged 18 years+, attending IAPT services in one of two London sites (Newham and Tower Hamlets). Each will be randomly allocated either to ‘immediate DIT for 16 weeks’ or to the ‘enhanced wait list/low-level routine clinical care’ group, followed by DIT after approx. 16 weeks (this being comparable to the usual wait period prior to receiving high-intensity DIT treatment in the services). Assessments will be at treatment midpoint, end of the treatment course and 12 months post end of the treatment.
It is a feasibility study that will help prepare the way for a future larger randomised controlled trial comparing the effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and DIT at treating adult depression within IAPT settings.
A sub-branch of the study is fMRI-REDIT. Participants in both treatment conditions within REDIT will be invited to do some simple tests during scanning at the beginning and at the end of their participation in the study. The purpose is to better understand which brain mechanisms correspond to different depressive symptoms and to determine which patterns of brain activity may predict how well participants respond to study interventions. Together, these will reveal brain functional systems that are clinically important in depression and its treatment. The aim is to recruit between 30 and 40 REDIT participants into the fMRI-REDITcomponent. In addition, volunteers from the community who have no depressive symptoms will also be recruited in order to compare scans and analyses between the two populations.
References:
Van H.L., Dekker J., Koelen J., Kool S., van AAlst G., Hendriksen M., et al. (2009). Patient preference compared with random allocation in short-term psychodynamic supportive psychotherapy with indicated addition of pharmacotherapy for depression.Psychotherapy Research, 19, 205-212.
Lemma A., Target M., and Fonagy P. (In Press). The Development of a Brief Psychodynamic Protocol for depression: Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy (DIT). Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy.