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• Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Background: Patients with comorbid depression and personality disorders suffer from a heavy disease burden while tailored treatment options are limited, accounting for a high psychological and economic burden. Little is known about the effect of treatment dosage and type of psychotherapy for this specific co-morbid patient population, in terms of...

Introduction Short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy (STPP) is an empirically supported treatment that is often used to treat depression. However, it is largely unclear if certain subgroups of depressed patients can benefit specifically from this treatment method. We describe the protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis of individual parti...

Background: Since the mid-1970s, short-term psychodynamic psychotherapies (STPP) for a broad range of psychological and somatic disorders have been developed and studied. Early published meta-analyses of STPP, using different methods and samples, have yielded conflicting results, although some meta-analyses have consistently supported an empirical...

Psychodynamic therapy (PT) for depression is the least examined treatment method for depression, compared to cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and interpersonal therapy. This article, consisting of five randomized clinical trials of short psychodynamic supportive psychotherapy (SPSP) conducted over the last 25 years in Amsterdam, will review the t...

Short-Term Psychoanalytic Supportive Psychotherapy (SPSP) is a face-to-face, individual psychotherapy, consisting of sixteen sessions in six months (first eight weekly, then eight fortnightly sessions). It is rooted in psychoanalytic theory. Its primary aim is to cure depression. A secondary goal is to reduce a patient's vulnerability to depression...

After participating in this educational activity, the reader should be better able to evaluate the empirical evidence for pre/post changes in psychoanalysis patients with complex mental disorders, and assess the limitations of the meta-analysis. The effectiveness of psychoanalysis is still a controversial issue, despite increasing research efforts....

Long-Term Psychoanalytic Treatments (LTPT) include both long-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy (LTPP) and psychoanalysis (PsAn). Current opinion seems to be that there is some evidence for the effectiveness of LTPP, but none for that of PsAn. This may be due in part to researchers not balancing the level of evidence of randomized controlled studies...

It remains largely unclear, firstly whether short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy (STPP) is an effective treatment for depression, and secondly, which study, participant, or intervention characteristics may moderate treatment effects. The purpose of this study is to assess the efficacy of STPP for depression and to identify treatment moderators. A...

There is a gap in the research literature on the effectiveness of long-term psychoanalytic therapies (LPT). To present a systematic review of studies dealing with LPT effectiveness and published from 1970 onward. A systematic literature search for studies dealing with the effectiveness of individual LPT in ambulatory, adult patients. Data about the...

The efficacy of Short Psychodynamic Supportive Psychotherapy (SPSP) has not yet been compared with pharmacotherapy. A mega-analysis based on three original Randomized Clinical Trials (RCTs) was performed. Patients with (mild to moderate) major depressive disorder were randomized in (24 weeks) SPSP (n = 97), pharmacotherapy (n = 45), or their combin...

systematic review regarding the effectiveness of long-term psychoanalytic therapy (LPT) on health care use and work impairment in adult outpatients. a systematic search for studies published between 1970 and 2005. Calculation of the weighted mean changes between pretreatment and treatment termination, and between pretreatment and follow-up. The fin...

Reviews of the relative efficacy of psychotherapy and combined therapy (psychotherapy with pharmacotherapy) for depression have yielded contradicting conclusions. This may be explained by the clinical heterogeneity of the studies reviewed. To conduct a meta-analysis with an acceptable level of homogeneity in order to investigate the relative effica...

In evidence-based medicine (EBM) hierarchy, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are ranked higher than cohort studies. However, cohort intervention studies are frequently, and RCTs rarely, used to investigate long-term psychotherapy (LTP). The authors compare the two methods and provide critical discussion of their acceptability, feasibility, and d...

In evidence-based medicine (EBM) hierarchy, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are ranked higher than cohort studies. However, cohort intervention studies are frequently, and RCTs rarely, used to investigate long-term psychotherapy (LTP). The authors compare the two methods and provide critical discussion of their acceptability, feasibility, and d...

We investigated the efficacy of pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy for depression by searching for RCT's. Studies were classified according to chronicity and severity and a meta-analysis was applied. Ten studies were included. Remission did not differ between psychotherapy (38%) and pharmacotherapy (35%). No differences were found in chronic, or in...

During the past decades personality pathology was considered to have a negative influence on the outcome of pharmacotherapy of depressive disorders. Recently, there has been a shift towards a less negative opinion. Still, the evidence in the literature remains inconclusive. This may be explained by methodological differences between published studi...

In het sonnet waarvan de aanhef Ik ben een God in 't diepst van mijn gedachten overbekend is geworden, heeft Kloos, vele jaren voordat Freud (1914) zijn traktaat ‘Zur Einführung des Narzissmus’ publiceerde, kernaspecten van narcisme, met name de afweerfunctie ervan, tot uitdrukking gebracht. Hij deed dat op een wijze die voor psychotherapeuten ook...

Dit essay betreft een interpretatie vanuit psychodynamisch perspectief van de roman ‘Gloed’ van Sándor Márai (1900 – 1989). Men kan in deze roman gelaagdheid onderscheiden op grond van een aantal elkaar aanvullende verhalen. Het eerste en oppervlakkigste verhaal betreft de driehoeksverhouding tussen een vrouw en twee mannen. Het tweede gaat over de...