VCU professor launches national psychotherapy training program to treat chronic depression

By Michael Ford
University News Services

A Virginia Commonwealth University psychology and psychiatry professor is launching a national training program for mental health professionals who treat chronically depressed outpatients.

James P. McCullough Jr., Ph.D., professor of psychology and psychiatry, is launching the Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy National Training Program. The therapy model, developed specifically to treat chronic depression, has been shown to be 85 percent effective at treating chronic depression when combined with medication. The results were obtained from outpatients who completed a clinical trial involving 12 medical sites. The study enrolled 680 chronically depressed outpatients and was reported in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2000.

“These outcome results were the highest obtained in any study of depression that has ever been reported,” McCullough said. “These results bode well for patients who have traditionally been very difficult to treat."

Developed during 20 years of research and clinical practice, CBASP approaches chronic depression as a lifestyle disorder. CBASP systematically trains patients to change some basic ways they live. Patients also learn that the way they live affects others in highly specific ways, and psychotherapy provides them with the interpersonal skills they need to change the unsatisfying effects they have on others. They learn to change negative relationship styles to positive ones.

The program is aimed at practitioners who do not live within a manageable radius of the 12 medical sites where there are trained and certified CBASP therapists. McCullough estimates that less than .05 percent of the chronically depressed patients have access to trained CBASP clinicians. The training program targets psychologists, psychiatrists, licensed professional counselors, psychiatric mental health clinical nurse specialists and social workers.

Patients are considered chronically depressed if the symptoms have lasted two or more years.   The majority of chronic patients first experience depression during early adolescence. Spontaneous remission rates are less than 10 percent.

“Chronic depression can be described as a disorder of the young and if it is not successfully treated, it can continue for a lifetime,” McCullough said.

McCullough estimates that the costs associated with chronic depression in the United States approaches $40 billion per year when treatment expenses and absenteeism and lost productivity are combined.

The first workshop for the CBASP national training program is June 11-12, 2005 at VCU. Additional workshops are scheduled for Oct. 22-23, 2005 in Atlanta and Feb. 11-12, 2006 in Phoenix. For information about CBASP, visit www.cbasp.org.