Mehta, Alisha;
Dykiert, Dominika;
Midgley, Nick;
(2023)
Understanding treatment non-responders: A qualitative study of depressed adolescents' experiences of 'unsuccessful' psychotherapy.
Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice
, 96
(2)
pp. 448-463.
10.1111/papt.12448.
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Abstract
OBJECTIVES: This paper aimed to explore the experiences of depressed adolescents who completed but did not 'respond' to standard psychotherapy, based on a lack of improvement in pre-post symptoms scores. DESIGN: This was a qualitative study employing interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). METHOD: Seventy-seven adolescents with moderate to severe depression were interviewed as part of a qualitative arm of a randomised controlled trial. Five adolescents' post-treatment interviews were purposively sampled, based on lack of improvement on pre-post symptom scores, and adolescents still scoring above the clinical threshold for depression. The interviews were analysed using IPA. RESULTS: Adolescents made sense of their depression as part of their identity and held negative expectations of therapy. Some aspects of therapy brought up intolerable feelings that contributed to disengagement in the therapeutic process and culminated in disappointing and hopeless endings. On the other hand, where a stronger therapeutic relationship was developed, some participants experienced certain improvements. CONCLUSIONS: Findings highlight how actively exploring the adolescent's therapy expectations, developing a strong early therapeutic relationship and being mindful of the potential impact of endings are important in therapeutic work with adolescents with depression, especially where they may have a strong sense of hopelessness and self-criticism. Moreover, the finding that adolescents experienced improvements in other domains despite a lack of symptom reduction highlights the need to review how treatment outcomes are currently defined. Integrating individual perspectives of therapy with quantitative outcome measures can provide a more nuanced insight of treatment effects.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Understanding treatment non-responders: A qualitative study of depressed adolescents' experiences of 'unsuccessful' psychotherapy |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1111/papt.12448 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1111/papt.12448 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2023 The Authors. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The British Psychological Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. |
| Keywords: | Adolescent, depression, qualitative, therapy outcomes, treatment non-response |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Clinical, Edu and Hlth Psychology |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10165062 |
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