Short-Term Psychodynamic Therapy Found Effective in Several Disorders

A meta-analysis of more than 30 years of randomized controlled trials of short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy (STPP) found it effective for treatment of psychiatric disorders.

Short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy produced statistically significant pretreatment-posttreatment effect sizes for target problems, general psychiatric symptoms, and social functioning. The effect sizes were stable and tended to increase at follow-up, according to a report of the study in the December 2004 Archives of General Psychiatry.

The study was authored by Falk Leichsenring, D.Sc., of the department of psychosomatics and psychotherapy at the University of Goettingen in Germany, and colleagues.

They identified studies of STPP published between January 1, 1970 and September 30, 2004, with a computerized search using MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and Current Contents.

The following inclusion criteria were applied to their search:

Seventeen studies were identified that fulfilled the criteria. Analysis showed that STPP yielded large and significant effect sizes for target problems (1.39), general psychiatric symptoms (0.90), and social functioning (0.80).

Effect sizes were significantly greater for patients receiving STPP than for those who were waiting-list control subjects in the studies and for patients in the studies who received treatment as usual.

“According to these results, patients treated with STPP are better off with regard to their target problems than 92 percent of the patients before therapy,” the authors stated. “At follow-up, which was on average 13 months after termination of therapy, they were better off than 95 percent of the patients.... These results are highly relevant for clinical practice.” They added that this finding also holds for another result.“ Comparing the effect sizes yielded at the end of therapy and follow-up, the effects of STPP proved to be stable and even tended to increase.”

The number of STPP sessions conducted in the studies ranged from seven to 40 and were performed in a face-to-face setting with one or two sessions per week.

Psychiatric disorders treated by STPP included major depression (two studies), maternal depression (one), posttraumatic stress disorder (one), bulimia nervosa (two), anorexia nervosa (one), opiate dependence (two), cocaine dependence (one), cluster C personality disorders (three), borderline personality disorder (one), somatoform pain disorder (one), chronic functional dyspepsia (one), and social phobia (one).

The authors believe the analysis is unique in the literature because of the unusually rigorous inclusion criteria and because more than 75 percent of studies included had not been included in other meta-analyses of STPP. Moreover, the authors excluded studies of interpersonal psychotherapy, which had been included in earlier analyses.

“According to the results of this and other meta-analyses, STPP is an effective treatment of psychiatric disorders and yields stable results,” the authors said. “Further research should study not only the effects of STPP in specific psychiatric disorders but also the active ingredients of STPP... .Furthermore, effectiveness studies should address whether the methods of therapy that have proved to work in randomized control trials are effective in the field.”

An abstract of the article “The Efficacy of Short-Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy in Specific Psychiatric Disorders” is posted online at<http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/61/12/1208>.▪