Thanks to my co-authors @stephanbartholdy.bsky.social, @tkaiser.science, Marit K. List, and @evalottabrakemeier.bsky.social 🙏

#psychscisky 🧠🩺 (5/5)

Results:
- interpersonal problems ↘️ while fostering dominance in patients
- No differential treatment effects 🔍

Takeaway: Preliminary evidence that routine CBT improves interpersonal outcomes across diagnostic features and groups (4/5)

We used the pre-treatment waiting period as a comparison window to estimate the average treatment effect of CBT, adjusting for confounders and analysing differential treatment effects via (causal) random forests 🌳 (3/5)

Why this matters: interpersonal problems matter in psychotherapies, but we know surprisingly little about how well CBT adresses them. (2/5)

📝 New preprint: Causal effects of routine CBT on interpersonal problems (N = 687)

We provide an estimate of the average treatment effect and test for potential heterogeneity of treatment effects.

doi.org/10.31234/osf...

Short 🧵 (1/5)

Antidepressant treatment and risk of subsequent bipolar disorder in adolescents with unipolar depression Background Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are a common treatment for depression and anxiety in adolescents but are associated with an increased incidence of bipolar disorder (BD). Whe...

Is the link btwn Adolescent SSRI use & Bipolar Disorder causal?

Our study suggests: 𝐍𝐨.

When accounting for unmeasured confounding (e.g., depression severity) via Instrumental Variable analysis, the evidence for a causal link disappears.

mentalhealth.bmj.com/content/28/1...

#Psychiatry #MedSky

ω-3 Fatty Acids in Pediatric Major Depressive Disorder This randomized clinical trial assesses the efficacy of ω-3 fatty acids in reducing depressive symptoms and improving quality of life in children and adolescents with moderate to severe major depressi...

Large, well-conducted (at first glance) RCT finding no difference between 1.5 g of ω-3 fatty acids vs placebo in children and adolescents with moderate to severe pediatric major depressive disorder. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

New study (n=6,125) finds that starting trauma-focused psychotherapy for PTSD while using psychotropic medication is linked to reduced therapeutic gains. The strongest negative associations appeared for antidepressants. doi.org/10.1159/0005...

Immersive virtual reality-assisted therapy targeting persistent auditory verbal hallucinations in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia spectrum disorders in Denmark: the Challenge assessor-masked, ra... Challenge-VRT showed short-term efficacy in reducing the severity of auditory verbal hallucinations in patients with schizophrenia, and the findings support further development and evaluation of immer...

"the first fully powered trial to assess the efficacy and safety of an immersive virtual avatar-based intervention [...]
Challenge-VRT was significantly more effective than enhanced treatment-as-usual in reducing the severity of auditory hallucinations"

New Article
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

What’s the most effective way to deliver exposure therapy for anxiety? We tested:
🔹 Behavioural experiments (BE)
🔹 Cognitive restructuring before exposure
🔹 Habituation-based approaches

BE had the best outcomes.

🧠 How do you implement exposure?

🔗 bit.ly/3YTlR0n

#mentalhealth #ClinPsy

Thanks to everybody who chimed in!

I arrived at the conclusion that (1) there's a lot of interesting stuff about interactions and (2) the figure I was looking for does not exist.

So, I made it myself! Here's a simple illustration of how to control for confounding in interactions:>

The most important aims of psychotherapy: to love, to work, and to find meaning In the January issue of The Lancet Psychiatry, Michaela Ladmanová and colleagues1 published a qualitative meta-analysis on client-reported psychotherapy outcomes. Their analysis revealed nine clusters...

"The most important aims of psychotherapy: to love, to work, and to find meaning"

Even if the final naming of the clusters can be questioned, it is nevertheless an interesting approach to work out the underlying aims of the different schools of psychotherapy.

www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

tCBT New Paper: Using metaphor to facilitate cognitive detachment in cognitive behaviour therapies

Full free text at www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Preprint updated:

Evidence that Tetris Reduces Immediate but Not Subsequent Daily Intrusions of a Trauma Film: A Multilab Replication Study

osf.io/preprints/ps...

Frontiers | Enduring effects of psychotherapy, antidepressants and their combination for depression: a systematic review and meta-analysis

1. There is hardly any evidence on what happens after the end of depression treatments. Finally, Voderholzer et al. published their review on 19 such studies comparing antdepressant tx and psychotherapie or their combination.
doi.org/10.3389/fpsy...

Depression is preventable. Our individual participant data meta-analysis based on >7000 participants proved that psychological interventions reduce the incidence of depression within a year from 10% to 6%. authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

Question for #WorldSnakeDay: Is this a female adder? Could it be pregnant? 🐍 #herps #snakes

Learning during sleep in humans:

A comprehensive overview of the history of sleep learning research, from its empirical beginnings in the 1940s to the present day. 

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Scientists say there’s still time to stop Greenland ice sheet melting There’s good news for the ice sheet, which may withstand temporary breaches in 1.5C, but emissions must still drop quickly.

"There’s good news for the ice sheet, which may withstand temporary breaches in 1.5C, but emissions must still drop quickly" - latest Nature study with PIK scientist Niklas Boers covered by Euronews.
www.euronews.com/green/2023/1...

Wäre der Effekt längsschnittlich nicht deutlich größer (gesetzt, dass WL-Pat. in Zukunft eher Rezidive erleben)?

Lack of contextualization affects cognitive testing, but the problem is even broader.

For example, one of the most common stress inductions prompted one of our puzzled Kenyan participants to remark: "Why are we being interviewed for a job by butchers?"

www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/gs-...

Which brings my to the best paper I've read this year, by @samzhang.bsky.social, @aaronclauset.bsky.social and colleagues.