Wolfgang Lutz

Wolfgang Lutz
Universität Trier · Department of Psychology

Ph.D.

About

418
Publications
179,722
Reads
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11,107
Citations
Introduction
2007- Full Professor and head of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy at the University of Trier, Germany; Head of the Outpatient Psychotherapy Center at the University of Trier, Germany 2004-2007 SNF-Professor, Clinical Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Berne, Switzerland. 1999 - 2004 Universitätsassistent, Clinical Psychology Program, Department of Psychology, University of Berne, Switzerland. 2000 Early Career Contribution Award of the International Society for Psychotherapy Research 1997 - 1999 Visiting Scholar and Adjunct Lecturer at the Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, USA. 1991 - 1996 Research Associate at the Center for Psychotherapy Research, Stuttgart, Germany. 1992 – 1993 Research Associate at the Psychiatric Hospital, University of Heidelberg, Germany. 1987 - 1993 Ruprecht-Karls Universität Heidelberg Master (Dipl. Psych.) Germany
Additional affiliations
April 2007 - present
Universität Trier
Position
  • Professor (Full)
January 2004 - December 2007
Universität Bern
Position
  • Professor
August 1999 - April 2004
Universität Bern
Position
  • Research Associate

Publications

Publications (418)
Article
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There are large health, societal, and economic costs associated with attrition from psychological services. The recently emerged, innovative statistical tool of complex network analysis was used in the present proof-of-concept study to improve the prediction of attrition. Fifty-eight patients undergoing psychological treatment for mood or anxiety d...
Article
Outcome measurement in the field of psychotherapy has developed considerably in the last decade. This review discusses key issues related to outcome measurement, modeling, and implementation of data-informed and measurement-based psychological therapy. First, an overview is provided, covering the rationale of outcome measurement by acknowledging so...
Article
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Continuous outcome measurement in psychotherapies has become a central research topic only in the last two decades 1. Here we provide a short introduction to the relevant concepts and discuss the opportunities and challenges of their implementation in clinical practice. Most continuous outcome measurement systems comprise short self-report question...
Article
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Background: In this paper, we present the conceptual background and clinical implications of a research-based transtheoretical treatment and training model (4TM). Method: The model implements findings from psychotherapy outcome, process, and feedback research into a clinical and training framework that is open to future research. Results: The fra...
Article
Zusammenfassung Trotz der nachweislichen Wirksamkeit von Psychotherapie im Allgemeinen und PTBS-Behandlungen im Besonderen stehen Therapeut:innen vor Herausforderungen wie Therapieabbrüchen und fehlendem Ansprechen auf die Therapie. Die Entwicklungen neuer therapeutischer Ansätze zur Behandlung von PTBS allein konnten diese Probleme nicht lösen. D...
Article
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Background Complementing the development of evidence-based psychological therapies, practice-based evidence has developed from patient samples collected in routine care, addressing questions relevant to patients and practitioners, and thereby expanding our knowledge of psychological therapies and their impact. Implementation of assessments in routi...
Article
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Background The introduction of Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder (CSBD) into the 11th International Classification of Diseases has raised expectations for better treatment options for CSBD. Furthermore, the treatment demand has increased, particularly for pornography use disorder (PUD), a subtype of CSBD. Presumably due to the easy access to Inte...
Preprint
Full-text available
Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) stands as a valuable method to capture real-time data on individuals’ daily experiences and behaviors. In recent years, the utilization of EMA as a measurement method has substantially increased with the majority of studies emphasizing its clinical utility. However, a comprehensive overview of its use in clinic...
Article
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Objective: To date, many prediction studies in psychotherapy research have used cross-sectional data to predict treatment outcome. The present study used intensive longitudinal assessments and continuous time dynamic modeling (CTDM) to investigate the temporal dynamics of affective states and emotion regulation in the early phase of therapy and the...
Article
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Background The network theory of mental disorders asserts the pivotal role of feedback loops in psychopathology. We investigated intra-individual dynamics and potential feedback loops in psychological networks and their association with long-term outcomes. Methods At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, data from a population-based cohort (N =...
Preprint
Background: Complementing the development of evidence-based psychological therapies, practice-based evidence has developed from patient samples collected in routine care, addressing questions relevant to patients and practitioners, and thereby expanding our knowledge of psychological therapies and their impact. Implementation of assessments in rout...
Article
Web-based interventions can be effective in treating depressive symptoms. Patients with risk not responding to treatment have been identified by early change patterns. This study aims to examine whether early changes are superior to baseline parameters in predicting long-term outcome. In a randomized clinical trial with 409 individuals experiencing...
Book
Das Lehrbuch stellt die zentralen Inhalte des reformierten Masterstudiengangs Klinische Psychologie und Psychotherapie dar. Eingegangen wird dabei auf alle psychotherapeutischen Richtlinienverfahren, also die Kognitive Verhaltenstherapie, die Systemische Therapie, die Tiefenpsychologisch fundierte Therapie und die Analytische Psychotherapie, sowie...
Article
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Objective: To test the predictive accuracy and generalisability of a personalised advantage index (PAI) model designed to support treatment selection for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Method: A PAI model developed by Deisenhofer et al. (2018) was used to predict treatment outcomes in a statistically independent dataset including archival r...
Article
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The study demonstrates that institution effects (IE) are a relevant contributor to symptom change, treatment duration, and dropout probability in psychological therapies. Neglecting the institution level can lead to an overestimation of the therapist effect (TE). Therefore, future research should consider the inclusion of institution-level variable...
Article
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Objective: Despite the importance for understanding mechanisms of change, little is known about the order of change in daily life emotions, cognitions, and behaviors during treatment of depression. This study examined the within-person temporal order of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral improvements using ecological momentary assessment data. Me...
Article
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We face increasing demand for greater access to effective routine mental health services, including telehealth. However, treatment outcomes in routine clinical practice are only about half the size of those reported in controlled trials. Progress feedback, defined as the ongoing monitoring of patients’ treatment response with standardized measures,...
Preprint
Full-text available
This paper was submitted in 2021 to the APS journal Clinical Psychological Science. It got a very favorable, a neutral and a critical one. The editor decided rejection with no chance to resubmit it. At the same time I caught an illness and lost any interest to submit it to other journals and forgot about it. Now I’ll check the field again and inclu...
Article
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We aim to use topic modeling, an approach for discovering clusters of related words (“topics”), to predict symptom severity and therapeutic alliance in psychotherapy transcripts, while also identifying the most important topics and overarching themes for prediction. We analyzed 552 psychotherapy transcripts from 124 patients. Using BERTopic (Groote...
Article
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Objective and Aim This study aimed to assess the impact of switching from face-to-face (f2f) psychotherapy to video therapy (VT) due to the COVID-19 pandemic on in-session processes, i.e., the therapeutic alliance, coping skills, and emotional involvement, as rated by both patients and therapists. Methods A total of N = 454 patients with mood or a...
Article
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Background:Some patients return for further psychological treatment in routine services, although it is unclear how common this is, as scarce research is available on this topic. Aims:To estimate the treatment return rate and describe the clinical characteristics of patients who return for anxiety and depression treatment. Method:A large dataset (N...
Article
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Objective: Given the importance of emotions in psychotherapy, valid measures are essential for research and practice. As emotions are expressed at different levels, multimodal measurements are needed for a nuanced assessment. Natural Language Processing (NLP) could augment the measurement of emotions. The study explores the validity of sentiment an...
Article
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To train novice students adequately, it is crucial to understand where they start and how they develop their skills. This study examined the impact of novice students’ characteristics on their initial clinical micro-skills when treating simulated patients with cognitive behavior therapy. The sample consisted of 44 graduate psychology students treat...
Article
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In the past decade, there has been an increase in research related to the routine collection and active use of standardized patient data in psychotherapy. Research has increasingly focused on personalization of care to patients, clinical skills and interventions that modulate treatment outcomes, and implementation strategies, all of which appear to...
Article
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Background Suicidal ideation is a major concern in clinical practice. Yet, little is known about prevalence rates of suicidal ideation in patients undergoing outpatient psychotherapeutic treatment. Therefore, the aim of the current study is to assess the prevalence of suicidal ideation in a large sample of psychotherapy outpatients in Germany. The...
Article
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Objective: This study aimed to provide evidence for treatment credibility (TC) as a potential mechanism of change in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Therefore, it focused on within-person effects that are free of the influence of stable characteristics and thus allow to exclude certain alternative explanations for the association under study. M...
Article
Die kontinuierliche Erhebung psychometrischer Daten vor, während und nach einer psychotherapeutischen Behandlung kann als Qualitätssicherungsmaßnahme Therapeut:innen in ihrer klinischen Arbeit unterstützen und zugleich eine belastbare Datengrundlage für die Psychotherapieforschung schaffen. Im Rahmen der Qualitätssicherung können die erhobenen Date...
Article
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Zusammenfassung Hintergrund In diesem Beitrag werden die konzeptionellen Grundlagen sowie die klinischen Implikationen eines forschungsbasierten t rans t heoretischen T herapie- und T rainingsmodells (4TM) vorgestellt; dieses kann das Fundament für eine zukünftige evidenzbasierte und personalisierte Psychotherapiepraxis sowie Aus- und Weiterbildun...
Article
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Outcome measurement including data-informed decision support for therapists in psychological therapy has developed impressively over the past two decades. New technological developments such as computerized data assessment, and feedback tools have facilitated advanced implementation in several seetings. Recent developments try to improve the clinic...
Article
Objective: Improving prediction abilities in the therapy process can increase therapeutic success for a variety of reasons, such as more personalised treatment or resource optimisation. The increasingly applied methods of dynamic prediction seem to be very promising for this purpose. Prediction models are usually based on static approaches of freq...
Article
Objective To develop two prediction algorithms recommending person-centered experiential therapy (PCET) or cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for patients with depression: (1) a full data model using multiple trial-based and routine variables, and (2) a routine data model using only variables available in the English NHS Talking Therapies program....
Article
Full-text available
Background Progress feedback, also known as measurement-based care (MBC), is the routine collection of patient-reported measures to monitor treatment progress and inform clinical decision-making. Although a key ingredient to improving mental health care, sustained use of progress feedback is poor. Integration into everyday workflow is challenging,...
Article
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Mental health services are experiencing notable transformations as innovative technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly utilized in a growing number of studies and services. These cutting-edge technologies carry the promise of substantial improvements in the field of mental health. Nevertheless, questions emerge about the align...
Article
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This study aimed to develop and test algorithms to determine the individual relevance of two psychotherapeutic change processes (i.e., mastery and clarification) for outcome prediction. We measured process and outcome variables in a naturalistic outpatient sample treated with an integrative treatment for a variety of diagnoses (n = 608) during the...
Article
Im Zuge des weltweiten Anstieges der Bedeutung von psychischen Störungen 1, werden frühzeitige Interventionen und wirksame psychotherapeutische Behandlungen für ein funktionierendes Gesundheitssystem immer wichtiger. Der aktuelle Stand der Psychotherapieforschung zeigt jedoch, dass nicht alle Patient:innen gleichermaßen von Psychotherapie profitier...
Preprint
Full-text available
Objectives: We aim to use topic modeling, an approach for discovering clusters of related words (“topics”), to predict symptom severity, therapeutic alliance, and depression diagnosis in psychotherapy transcripts, while also identifying the most important topics and overarching themes for prediction. Methods: We analyzed 552 psychotherapy transcri...
Article
Background and objectives: Imagery-based techniques have become a promising means in the treatment of test anxiety (TA). Although previous studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of imagery-based treatment, not all clients seem to benefit from it. The present study compares clients’ pre- as well as post-treatment emotion dynamics between respon...
Article
Objective: Psychotherapy can be improved by integrating the study of mediators (how it works) and moderators (for whom it works). To demonstrate this integration, we studied the relationship between resource activation, problem coping experiences and symptoms in cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) for depression, to obtain preliminary insights on caus...
Article
Objective: We investigated the presence of latent transition profiles in a sample of users of a cognitive-behavioral mental health app for the general population. Users’ baseline characteristics were used as predictors of the profiles. The role of engagement with the app in the transition profiles was examined. Method: A total of 541 users complete...
Article
Full-text available
Background and aims: For the first time, the ICD-11 provides the diagnosis compulsive sexual behavior disorder (CSBD) that can be assigned for pornography use disorder (PUD). This study aimed to estimate the prevalence of PUD and associated consequences in Germany, to identify the psychotherapy demand among likely PUD (lPUD) cases and the treatmen...
Chapter
Pre-print version (authors' manuscript) of Chapter 5 from the book APA Handbook of Psychotherapy, Volume 2.
Chapter
Several interventions are available for the treatment of depression, including empirically supported psychological and pharmacological interventions. Despite this, less than half of patients have an optimal response to their initial intervention and the care pathway for many is characterized by a prolonged trial-and-error process to search for the...
Article
Full-text available
Objective: To provide a research review of the components and outcomes of routine outcome monitoring (ROM) and recommendations for research and therapeutic practice. Method: A narrative review of the three phases of ROM – data collection, feeding back data, and adapting therapy – and an overview of patient outcomes from 11 meta-analytic studies....
Article
Objective The occurrence of dropout from psychological interventions is associated with poor treatment outcome and high health, societal and economic costs. Recently, machine learning (ML) algorithms have been tested in psychotherapy outcome research. Dropout predictions are usually limited by imbalanced datasets and the size of the sample. This pa...
Article
Full-text available
Introduction Routine Outcome Monitoring (ROM) has emerged as a strong candidate to improve psychotherapy processes and outcome. However, its use and implementation are greatly understudied in Latin-America. Therefore, the aim of the present pilot study conducted in Argentina was to implement a ROM and feedback system grounded on a psychometrically...
Article
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Zusammenfassung: In diesem Beitrag soll ein forschungsbasiertes und transtheoretisches Weiterbildungskonzept vorgestellt werden, das darauf abzielt, Erkenntnisse aus der Psychotherapie-Ergebnis-, Prozess-und Feedback-For-schung als offenen konzeptionellen Rahmen für die klinische Praxis und Weiterbildung zu nutzen. Diskutiert werden wichtige Fehlsc...
Article
Die Geschichte der Psychotherapie begann gegen Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts und verlief seither eher diskontinuierlich. Es entstanden zahlreiche Verfahren bzw. Therapieschulen (einige Zählungen gehen von weit über 100 aus) mit eigenen psychopathologischen Konzepten, psychologischen Veränderungsmodellen und Fachorganisationen [1]. Die großen Therapiesc...
Book
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Derzeit erfahren psychotherapeutische Ansätze einen Wandel in Richtung eines individualisierten, modularen Organisationsprinzips. Dabei wird an gestörten Mechanismen und weniger an Störungsbildern oder Theorien von Therapieschulen angesetzt. Die Modulare Psychotherapie bietet ein Konzept von hoher Praktikabilität in der ambulanten und stationären V...
Article
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The current article presents a way of practising case formulation using technology augmentation in the context of data-informed psychotherapy. First, we explain how case formulation guides the decision-making processes in psychotherapy and how decisions made under an intuitive clinical judgement can be biased. The use of actuarial methods is pointe...
Article
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Background Emotions play a key role in psychotherapy. However, a problem with examining emotional states via self-report questionnaires is that the assessment usually takes place after the actual emotion has been experienced which might lead to biases and continuous human ratings are time and cost intensive. Using the AI-based software package Non-...
Preprint
Full-text available
Objective: Providing therapists with feedback about their patients has been shown to be beneficial in several ways. Network models may provide a novel way to depict individual patients’ symptomatology. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) methods are often used, so that a patient-level database can be used for the necessary calculations. Method: T...
Article
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Zusammenfassung. Theoretischer Hintergrund: Das BDI-II ist ein Selbstbeurteilungsinstrument zur Erfassung des Schweregrads einer Depression. Es liegen kaum Analysen mit Modellen aus der Item-Response-Theorie (IRT) vor. Fragestellung: Wie hoch ist die Messgenauigkeit des BDI-II über die unterschiedlichen Ausprägungen des latenten Traits (Depressivit...
Article
Objective: The study investigated the contribution of therapists and patients to the therapeutic bond and their associations (at the within and between levels) to treatment outcome. On this aim, the social relations model (SRM, aimed to analyze dyadic interpersonal data) was implemented. Method: A novel design for individual psychotherapy studie...
Article
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Objective: Attunement is a novel measure of nonverbal synchrony reflecting the duration of the present moment shared by two interaction partners. This study examined its association with early change in outpatient psychotherapy. Methods: Automated video analysis based on motion energy analysis (MEA) and cross-correlation of the movement time-ser...
Article
Background: Early dropout hinders the effective adoption of brief psychological interventions and is associated with poor treatment outcomes. This study examined if attendance and depression treatment outcomes could be improved by matching patients to either face-to-face or computerized low-intensity psychological interventions. Methods: Archival...
Article
Background Imagery rescripting (IR), an emotion-focused technique for processing dysfunctional core beliefs, is an increasing topic of psychotherapy research; however, the underlying mechanisms of the technique remain unclear. The results of recent studies on physiological synchrony suggest that processes such as co-regulation could play a signific...
Article
Zusammenfassung Die Kurzform des Bielefelder Fragebogens zu Partnerschaftserwartungen (BFPE12) misst drei partnerbezogene Bindungsskalen: Akzeptanzprobleme, Öffnungsbereitschaft und Zuwendungsbedürfnis. Die vorliegende Studie untersuchte Messinvarianz und Validität des BFPE12 anhand einer klinischen (N=102) und einer nicht-klinische Stichprobe (N=1...
Article
Full-text available
Objective: The therapist effect has been demonstrated in various studies. However, studies on putative therapist characteristics show heterogeneous results. Although the majority of studies have solely examined effects between therapists, a growing interest in effects within therapists has emerged. However, it remains unclear whether therapist cha...
Article
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Background: Although psychotherapy has shown to be effective for most patients, about one-third of patients do not benefit or deteriorate during treatment. Technical progress has allowed the integration of routine outcome monitoring (ROM) into treatment, helping therapists detect patients at risk for a nonresponse or poor outcome early on. Psychol...
Article
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Background About 30% of patients drop out of cognitive–behavioural therapy (CBT), which has implications for psychiatric and psychological treatment. Findings concerning drop out remain heterogeneous. Aims This paper aims to compare different machine-learning algorithms using nested cross-validation, evaluate their benefit in naturalistic settings...
Article
The augmentation of technology to the delivery of CBT has enormously increased in recent years. This commemoration of Dr. Aaron T. Beck’s contribution to the field focuses on examples such as CBT internet treatments, video treatments, but especially on data-informed CBT, precision mental health and digitally based treatment navigation systems. It e...
Article
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In recent years, network approaches to psychopathology have sparked much debate and have had a significant impact on how mental disorders are perceived in the field of clinical psychology. However, there are many important challenges in moving from theory to empirical research and clinical practice and vice versa. Therefore, in this article, we bri...
Article
Full-text available
Imagery rescripting (IR), an effective intervention technique, may achieve its benefits through various change mechanisms. Previous work has indicated that client–therapist physiological synchrony during IR may serve as one such mechanism. The present work explores the possibility that therapist-led vs. client-led synchrony may be differentially ti...
Article
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Background Routine outcome monitoring can support clinicians to detect patients who deteriorate [not-on-track (NOT)] early in psychotherapy. Implemented Clinical Support Tools can direct clinicians’ attention towards potential obstacles to a positive treatment outcome and provide suggestions for suitable interventions. However, few studies have co...
Article
Objective This study investigated symptom change trajectory for patients with persistent somatic symptoms (PSS) during psychotherapy and the association of these patterns with pre-treatment characteristics and long-term outcome. Methods Growth mixture modeling was used to identify trajectory curves in a sample of N = 210 outpatients diagnosed with...