Triple Aim Psychotherapy: Aimed at Improving Patient Experience, Population Health, and Cost

NCT ID: NCT03659591

Last Updated: 2018-09-06

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: UNKNOWN
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 80 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2018-09-30
• Study Completion Date: 2019-11-30

Brief Summary

Community mental health programs in publically-funded jurisdictions such as Canada often have limited budgets in order to provide services, which can result in inadequate access to effective treatment for patients. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) is a gold-standard psychotherapy for depression and anxiety. In order to improve access to treatment, community mental healthcare settings often provide CBT in a group format for patients experiencing mild-to-moderate symptoms. However, typical protocols for delivering group CBT in a community setting nonetheless require a considerable investment of limited clinician time. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) developed the Triple Aim, which is a framework describing an approach to optimizing health system performance by simultaneously pursuing three dimensions, namely improving the patient experience of care; improving the health of populations; and reducing the associated per capita costs of care. Adaptive Psychological Training (APT) is a group-based psychotherapy designed with all of the dimensions of the Triple Aim in mind simultaneously. In its development, APT drew heavily upon mindfulness-based approaches. To-date, APT has already demonstrated positive outcomes in pilot research and in community clinical settings. The purpose of the current study is to determine whether for a given population of patients experiencing mild-to-moderate symptoms of depression and/or anxiety, APT can facilitate meaningful change for more patients per time spent by clinicians than can CBT.

Detailed Description

Depression and anxiety are highly prevalent in the general population. Community mental health programs in publically-funded jurisdictions such as Canada often have relatively limited, fixed budgets in order to provide services, which can result in inadequate access to effective treatment for patients. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) is a gold-standard psychotherapeutic treatment for depression and anxiety. In order to improve access to treatment, community mental healthcare settings often provide CBT in a group format for patients experiencing mild-to-moderate symptoms. However, typical protocols for delivering group CBT in a community setting nonetheless require a considerable investment of limited clinician time.

The question arises as to whether this is the most efficient and effective use of clinician time; in other words, per hour spent of clinician time, does this approach maximize the number of patients experiencing adequate and meaningful clinical improvement? The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) developed the Triple Aim, which is a framework describing an approach to optimizing health system performance by simultaneously pursuing three dimensions, namely improving the patient experience of care; improving the health of populations; and reducing the associated per capita costs of care. Studies of psychotherapy rarely pursue all three of these dimensions simultaneously. Efforts to achieve the best clinical outcome for an individual often lead to restrictive inclusionary/exclusionary criteria that sacrifice reaching the wider population; conversely, efforts to improve population health often prioritize composite overall clinical improvement across an entire group, even though the change experienced by many of the individuals in the population might not be clinically meaningful; focusing primarily on cost-effectiveness often sacrifices the individual's experience and/or the population's needs.

Adaptive Psychological Training (APT) is a group-based psychotherapy designed with all of the dimensions of the Triple Aim in mind simultaneously. In its development, APT drew heavily upon Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, an evidence-based psychotherapy that itself draws upon both evidence-based eastern psychotherapeutic practices and CBT, but APT also drew upon other evidence-based and evidence-supported psychotherapies including interpersonal and relational approaches, as well as meaning-focused psychoanalytic models. It also drew from psychology and neuroscience more broadly, as well as from learning theory and from practical clinical and operational experience. Inclusion/exclusion criteria, group size, number of sessions, in-session practice and learning, and between-session practice and learning were all adapted from the perspective of trying to achieve high quality outcomes for a broader population within more contained costs, and thereby increase access to quality care.

To-date, APT has already demonstrated positive outcomes in pilot research and in community clinical settings. The purpose of this specific study is to determine whether for a given population of patients experiencing mild-to-moderate symptoms of depression and/or anxiety, APT can facilitate meaningful change for more patients per time spent by clinicians than can CBT (the gold standard). The significance of this study includes its potential contribution to determining how best to deploy the limited resource of clinician time in a community setting in order to best help the most people.

Conditions

Anxiety Symptoms; Depressive Symptoms

Study Design

• Allocation Method: RANDOMIZED
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Primary Study Purpose: TREATMENT
• Blinding Strategy: SINGLE

Study Groups

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy

10 week, manual-based group CBT treatment for depression and anxiety, followed by optional booster sessions

Group Type: ACTIVE_COMPARATOR

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

CBT will be delivered in group format, consisting of 10 weekly two-hour sessions, with 10 participants per group

Adaptive Psychological Training

5 week, manual-based group APT treatment for depression and anxiety, followed by optional booster sessions

Group Type: ACTIVE_COMPARATOR

Adaptive Psychological Training

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

APT will be delivered in group format, consisting of 5 weekly two-hour sessions, with 20 participants per group

Interventions

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy

CBT will be delivered in group format, consisting of 10 weekly two-hour sessions, with 10 participants per group

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Adaptive Psychological Training

APT will be delivered in group format, consisting of 5 weekly two-hour sessions, with 20 participants per group

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Other Intervention Names

CBT; APT

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• Treatment-seeking adults, interested and willing to participate in group psychotherapy
• Mild-to-moderate depressive (score of ≥10 and <20 on PHQ9) and/or anxious (score of ≥8 and <15 on GAD7) symptoms
• Ability to communicate, in written and spoken English

Exclusion Criteria

• Severe depressive/anxious symptoms
• Patients where the primary clinical focus is active suicidality or harm-to-others, psychosis, mania, substance use, posttraumatic stress, or personality pathology such that it would interfere with group function
• Recent course(s) of the study psychotherapies

• Minimum Eligible Age: 18 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No

Sponsors

Joseph Brant Hospital

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Dr. Steven Selchen

Chief of Psychiatry

Responsibility Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Principal Investigators

Steven Selchen, MD MSt FRCPC

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Joseph Brant Hospital

Locations

Joseph Brant Hospital

Burlington, Ontario, Canada

Countries

Canada

Central Contacts

Steven Selchen, MD MSt FRCPC

Role: CONTACT

dr.steven.selchen@josephbranthospital.ca

(905) 681-4812

Benjamin D Diplock, BScH

Role: CONTACT

ben.diplock@sunnybrook.ca

Facility Contacts

Steven Selchen, MD MSt FRCPC

Role: primary

dr.steven.selchen@josephbranthospital.ca

(905) 681-4812

Other Identifiers

000-044-18

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id