About DIPNOT

Development of an Intervention for Persistent Not On Track (DIPNOT)

DIPNOT is a research project that aims to improve the therapeutic treatment for patients with depression in outpatient psychiatry. In this project, individual patient-centered add-on interventions will be developed and they will be offered to patients who are not on track during group therapy.

People with depression are often offered group-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) in Danish Mental Health Care Services. CBT is an evidence-based treatment and is recommended in the guidelines for the treatment of depression that is developed by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Nevertheless, about 50% of patients with depression do not experience a positive change when having participated in CBT. Progress monitoring of therapy outcomes is a way to identify those patients that need other or additional treatment in order to gain improvement. In the present project, we will develop an intervention called DIPNOT. DIPNOT is a combination of progress monitoring, clinical support tools, and add-on interventions that are tailored to the individual patient. The development of DIPNOT will consist of two sub-studies. In the first study, we will follow patients with depression who participate in group CBT. We will conduct progress monitoring, and the therapists will receive warnings and clinical support tools in case a patient does not seem to improve. By including visual illustrations of patients' symptom progress in interviews with patients and therapists, we will explore their experiences and thoughts about what was and could have been helpful. Based on the results of study 1, study 2 focuses on those patients that are persistently not on track. We will implement a selection of add-on interventions, consisting of 5-7 individual sessions with different content. After the therapy course, we will conduct interviews with the patients and their therapists concerning their experiences of the new intervention where some of the patients participated in extra sessions.

The project is carried out in collaboration between Psychiatry West, Region Sjælland, and Mental Health Outpatient Clinic Ballerup, Region Hovedstaden.

Start date: May 1, 2021

End date: April 31, 2024 

Timeframe