Browsing by Autor "Ioana A. Cristea"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2

Effectiveness of psychotherapy: Synthesis of a “meta-analytic research domain” across world regions and 12 mental health problems.
(American Psychological Association, 2025) Mathias Harrer; Clara Miguel; Wouter van Ballegooijen; Markéta Čihařová; Constantin Yves Plessen; Paula Kuper; Antonia A Sprenger; Claudia Buntrock; Davide Papola; Ioana A. Cristea
The scientific output generated in psychology has surged in recent decades, including the number of studies investigating psychological treatments. To keep track of all this evidence, we developed the "Metapsy" meta-analytic research domain: a comprehensive system of open databases and tailored software that allows for rapid evidence generation. We leverage this novel infrastructure to summarize the effect of psychological treatment across 12 mental health problems and trace back the global expansion of psychotherapy research over the past 50 years. Including 1,029 studies with 85,952 patients, our results indicate small to moderate average benefits in treating psychosis (g = 0.32), suicidal ideation (g = 0.34), borderline personality disorder (g = 0.46), and prolonged grief (g = 0.49). In contrast, psychological interventions have large average effects on depression (g = 0.73), problem gambling (g = 0.80), panic (g = 0.83), generalized anxiety (g = 0.86), social anxiety (g = 0.95), obsessive-compulsive (g = 1.18), posttraumatic stress disorder (g = 1.18), and phobias (g = 1.25). Most available evidence (83.4%-86.1%) comes from high-income and Western countries, but their dominance is declining. We found no indication that psychotherapy is less effective in low- and middle-income countries (g = 0.38-2.41) or non-Western cultures (g = 0.74-2.20). We discuss ways to further enhance psychotherapy's public health impact, as well as how the meta-analytic research domain concept may be extended to other types of psychological research in the future. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).
Rethinking access to psychological treatment protocols in mental health research
(Cambridge University Press, 2025) Chrysanthi Blithikioti; G Tomei; Federico Visconti; Irene Gómez‐Gómez; Ioana A. Cristea
Introduction Open access to psychological treatment manuals is critical for advancing research and clinical practice, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, where access to mental health care is scarce. Despite growing recognition of the need for freely available manuals to ensure replicability, transparency, and wider dissemination of evidence-based interventions, open and free access to intervention manuals remains limited. Objectives We aimed to quantify the availability of protocols and manuals for psychological interventions used in randomized clinical trials (RCTs) for severe mental disorders. This research is part of the broader European Research Council – funded project DECOMPOSE, in which we employ a systematic and reproducible approach for decoding, classifying, and evaluating the active ingredients of psychological interventions. Methods Using recent network meta-analyses of RCTs, we collected psychological interventions for psychotic, bipolar, substance use, eating, and borderline personality disorders. We attempted to retrieve intervention protocols and manuals directly from trial publications or their published protocols and referenced manuals. If the protocols or manuals were not accessible, we contacted the study authors to request the materials. Results We identified a total of 259 RCTs, but only 18 had published protocols. Of the 71 RCTs pre-registered on platforms such as ClinicalTrials.gov, only 5 provided an adequate description of the psychological treatment components, all of which overlapped with already published protocols. To retrieve missing materials, we contacted 450 authors from 241 RCTs. We received positive responses from 75 RCTs, negative responses from 55 RCTs, and no replies from 100 RCTs. We were not able to retrieve contact information for the authors of 11 RCTs. Of the 75 positive responses, we obtained the complete requested materials for only 47 trials. In the remaining cases, we were instructed to purchase the manuals (n=11), provided with only partial materials (n=4), or given additional references that were not the full intervention manual (n=13). Negative responses included the trial being too old or no authors’ access to the materials (n=22), commitment to send the materials without further follow-up (n=8), suggesting the paper as the sole available resource (n=11), and various other reasons (n=14) Conclusions Our findings reveal a significant lack of freely available intervention manuals, limiting the implementation and replicability of psychological treatments. Coordinated action is needed to ensure open access to these materials for more replicable research, wider dissemination of results, and improved access to evidence-based mental health care. Disclosure of Interest None Declared