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Reports of Therapy Skill Use and Their Efficacy in Daily Life in the Short-Term Treatment of Depression

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Abstract

Previous studies have shown that the use of therapy skills in between sessions is an important mechanism of symptom improvement. The current study expands this line of research by using a diary approach to examine the use of therapy skills in daily life. A sample of 39 depressed adults (85% female, mean age 38) were signaled twice per week throughout the course of either cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) or self-system therapy (SST). Results showed that, on days when participants reported greater use of therapy skills, they reported better mood and functioning in almost all domains. Additionally, participants in CBT reported greater use of cognitive skills while participants in SST reported greater use of self-regulatory skills. This study demonstrates that repeated assessments of daily events and experiences, which prevent retrospective reporting biases, further confirm the importance of therapy skill use as a mechanism of action in psychotherapy.

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Notes

  1. Note that responses from participants often made it rather obvious which condition they were assigned to, so, while the actual assignments were not revealed until the coding was complete, it was not possible to remain completely “blind”.

  2. Note that we allowed both the slopes and intercepts to be random due to the number of estimates obtained in the daily sample. The entire model was random.

  3. The aggregates were created based upon past experience sampling research and also on the convergent validity of the items. A reliability analysis conducted after the fact reveals that all aggregates had high levels of agreement. Cronbach’s alpha for Positive Affect (Alpha = 0.918), Negative Affect (Alpha = 0.859), negative somatic symptoms (Alpha = 0.757).

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Acknowledgements

This study was funded by NIMH (Award No. MH090414-02).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UNCG Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 296 Eberhart, PO Box 26170, Greensboro, NC, USA

    Ariana C. Hoet, Kari M. Eddington & Paul J. Silvia

  2. Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville, TN, USA

    Chris J. Burgin

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  1. Ariana C. Hoet
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  2. Chris J. Burgin
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  3. Kari M. Eddington
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  4. Paul J. Silvia
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Correspondence to Kari M. Eddington.

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Conflict of interest

Ariana C. Hoet, Chris J. Burgin, Kari M. Eddington, and Paul J. Silvia declared that they have no conflict of interests.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Hoet, A.C., Burgin, C.J., Eddington, K.M. et al. Reports of Therapy Skill Use and Their Efficacy in Daily Life in the Short-Term Treatment of Depression. Cogn Ther Res 42, 184–192 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-017-9852-y

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