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Evidence-Based Relationship Factors in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Mood Disorders

A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601). This special issue belongs to the section "Mental Health".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (4 July 2023) | Viewed by 3892

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, 21-27100 Pavia, Italy
Interests: therapeutic relationship; psychoanalysis; evidence-based assessment; evidence-based treatment; mood disorder

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Guest Editor
Grossman School of Medicine, New York University, New York, NY 10016, USA
Interests: bipolar disorder; depression; suicide; adolescents; technology; evidence-based assessment; evidence-based treatment

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Guest Editor
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599‑3270, USA
Interests: bipolar disorder; mood disorder; evidence-based assessment; evidence-based treatment; emotions; clinical decision making

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Guest Editor
Department of Psychiatry and Psychology at the Hospital Clinic, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
Interests: clinical psychiatry; bipolar disorder; neuroscience
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues, 

Mood disorders are the most common types of mental disorders and one of the leading causes of disability worldwide. They lead to cognitive and social functioning impairments, negative impact on quality of life, and higher suicidality and mortality rates. All this entails high costs for patients, families, and society. Currently, pharmacotherapy represents the most widely used treatment option, but growing evidence suggests that although it is effective in the treatment of acute episodes, medication alone does not help many patients to achieve functional recovery. Psychotherapies, especially in combination with pharmacotherapy, are effective in producing behavioral and lifestyle changes essential to relapse prevention, long-term maintenance, and promoting positive function (vs. symptom reduction) in people with mood disorders, yet there is still much to improve in our understanding, management, and treatment of mood disorders from a psychological perspective. Waiting for progress in personalized psychiatric treatment approaches that could lead to precise biological interventions, implementing evidence-based psychological assessment and treatment for mood disorder is essential to reduce their burden at an individual, societal and public health levels. An efficient assessment process is essential because it leads to more accurate diagnosis, better treatment matching, increased patient engagement, and enhanced outcomes. However, to be fully effective the evidence-based assessment should be ‘humanized’ because both diagnostic and psychotherapeutic processes take place inside the patient–clinician relationship. The latter’s technical and relational parts are constantly and reciprocally interacting; and the relationship accounts for process and outcome variance in and of itself.

This special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH) focuses on the current state of knowledge on the role of the relationship elements in the care of (child, adolescent, and adult) patients with mood disorders and their families. New theoretical and papers, qualitative and quantitative research papers, reviews, meta-analyses, and evidence-based case reports are welcome to this issue. Papers dealing with methodological aspects of an evidence-based approach to assessment and either pharmacological, psychotherapeutic, or combined treatment are also welcome.

IJERPH is an open access journal with a four-year impact factor of 3.42. Our goal with this special issue is to bring the perspectives and methods of psychology, including your work, to a new audience, with the open access amplifying the ability for the information to get shared rapidly through new connections in the web of collaboration and science. 

Dr. Alberto Stefana
Dr. Anna Van Meter
Prof. Dr. Eric A. Youngstrom
Prof. Dr. Eduard Vieta
Guest Editors

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • mood disorder
  • depression
  • bipolar disorder
  • diagnostic and therapeutic relationship
  • relationship elements
  • evidence-based assessment
  • evidence-based relationships
  • therapeutic alliance
  • countertransference
  • real relationship

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Review

23 pages, 825 KiB  
Review
Clinicians’ Emotional Reactions toward Patients with Depressive Symptoms in Mood Disorders: A Narrative Scoping Review of Empirical Research
by Alberto Stefana, Paolo Fusar-Poli, Cristina Gnisci, Eduard Vieta and Eric A. Youngstrom
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19(22), 15403; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph192215403 - 21 Nov 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3061
Abstract
The purpose of this article is to narratively review the empirical literature on clinicians’ emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses (i.e., countertransference) to depressive and other symptoms of patients with mood disorders. Therapist subjective responses (countertransference) can negatively affect both diagnostic and therapeutic processes, [...] Read more.
The purpose of this article is to narratively review the empirical literature on clinicians’ emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses (i.e., countertransference) to depressive and other symptoms of patients with mood disorders. Therapist subjective responses (countertransference) can negatively affect both diagnostic and therapeutic processes, especially when they are not recognized and managed promptly. However, at the same time, countertransference recognition, processing, and management can help inform the diagnostic process and improve the therapy process and outcome. In the last couple of decades, the number of studies that empirically explore countertransference toward mood disordered patients, as well as its relationship with various characteristics of both patients and treatment, has increased. Current evidence suggests that patients with depression tend to elicit more positive feelings among clinicians than patients with other severe mental disorders such as borderline personality disorder or schizophrenia. Furthermore, it documents the existence of associations between patients’ severity of depressive symptoms and clinicians’ subjective reactions, although the results regarding which specific countertransference patterns are evoked in relation to the different phases of the treatment are not entirely consistent. Lastly, growing evidence suggests the presence of clinicians’ specific emotional reactions towards patients with suicidal ideation and behavior. Full article
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