The Modular Protocol For Mental Health: A Pilot Trial
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The Modular Protocol For Mental Health (MP:MH): A pilot randomised clinical trial of a transdiagnostic psychological treatment for mood and anxiety disorders in adults
IRAS ID
142141
Contact name
Tim Dalgleish
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research summary
Anxiety and mood disorders are common conditions affecting up to 20% of\nadults. These conditions take different forms (or diagnoses) such as\nAgoraphobia, Panic Disorder, Depressive Disorder, Social Anxiety\nDisorder, and so on. Currently, our best non-drug (psychological)\ntreatments only focus on individual diagnoses. So, there are separate\ntreatments for Panic Disorder, or Depressive Disorder, or Social Anxiety,\netc. These ’diagnosis-specific’ treatments work well for people whose\nproblems fit neatly into a single diagnosis. However, they work far less well\nfor people with complex problems involving multiple diagnoses; e.g.,\nsomeone who is depressed and socially anxious and suffering panic\nattacks. In fact, 50% of patients fail to repond well to these existing\ntreatments.\nWe have therefore developed a new psychological treatment for anxiety\nand mood problems (the Modular Protocol for Mental Health [MPMH]).\nInstead of focusing on any single diagnosis, MPMH combines the best\ntreatment techniques into 10 modules (with clinician instructions and\nmaterials for service-users) each of which targets problems common\nacross all of the different mood and anxiety diagnoses (e.g., intense\nemotions, negative thinking, upsetting memories, distressing habits).\nMP:MH should therefore be a better treatment for the large numbers of\nindividuals whose problems do not fit neatly into a single diagnosis and for\nwhom any treatments targeting a single diagnosis would leave significant\ndifficulties unaddressed.\nWe have tested MPMH on a series of people (’cases’), each with a complex mixture of anxiety and mood disorders, with promising results. In this study we are examining how well MP:MH works for these more complex cases, compared to the standard treatment people receive in NHS Secondary Care. The proposed trial is a patient level two-arm trial that compares MPMH to treatment as usual for patients aged >18 years (N=50) with co-morbid mood, anxiety or stress-disorder diagnoses recruited from secondary care (the Affective Disorders Pathway of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust; CPFT).
REC name
East of England - Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/EE/0095
Date of REC Opinion
17 May 2016
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion