Maintaining Mechanisms of Chronic Depression and Their Changeability

NCT02801513 | Completed

• 1 other identifier: BA2255/3-1
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 74
• Locations: 0 countries
• Sites: N/A

Brief Summary

Despite considerable progress in the understanding of depression, the treatment of those who have entered a chronic course of the disorder still represents a major challenge. In order to develop more effective interventions it is important to learn more about maintaining mechanisms and the ways in which these can be addressed. Recent research has outlined aberrations in neurophysiological parameters that may serve as risk factors underlying tendencies to engage in maladaptive responses to negative mood, and that may be particularly pronounced in patients with chronic depression. Initial evidence suggests that such deficits may not be easily amenable through established treatments. The current study investigated whether mental training using mindfulness mediation, as compared to an active control training, could alter these parameters in chronically depressed patients.

Conditions

Major Depressive Disorder

Keywords

mindfulness; EEG; error-related negativity; late positive potential; long-range temporal correlations

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (3)

• Error-related negativity

  Event-related potential (EEG)

  Two weeks

• Long-range temporal correlations of theta oscillations in resting EEG

  Resting EEG

  Two weeks

• Late positive potentials

  Event-related potential (EEG)

  Two weeks

Secondary Outcomes (4)

• Levels of state mindfulness

  Two weeks

• Interoceptive awareness

  Two weeks

• Levels of depressive symptoms

  Two weeks

• Ruminative tendencies

  Two weeks

Study Arms (2)

Brief Mindfulness Training

EXPERIMENTAL

The brief mindfulness training comprised of three 1.5-hour weekly individual sessions and included intensive daily home practice. Participants were asked to engage in formal meditation practice for about 25 minutes twice per day on six out of seven days of each week using recorded guided meditations. Practices were shorter in duration than the practices in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT, Segal et al., 2002) in order to allow for more flexibility in scheduling the practices, but followed the standard sequence of mindfulness-based interventions.

Behavioral: Brief Mindfulness Training

Resting Control Training

ACTIVE COMPARATOR

The resting control training comprised of three 1.5-hour weekly individual sessions and included intensive daily home practice. Participants were asked to schedule regular rest periods as a means of deliberately retreating from the activities of the day. Length and frequency of the rest periods mirrored the time demands of the meditation training. Participants received a plausible rationale for the control training that linked acute depression to stress and suggested rest, relaxation, and disengagement from negative thinking as an initial and preliminary step towards recovery.

Behavioral: Resting Control Training

Interventions

Brief Mindfulness Training BEHAVIORAL

Brief mindfulness training comprising of three weekly individual sessions and daily guided meditation home practice

Also known as: Mindfulness Intervention

Brief Mindfulness Training

Resting Control Training BEHAVIORAL

Brief resting control training comprising of three weekly individual sessions and daily home practice consisting of resting periods

Also known as: Resting Control

Resting Control Training

Eligibility Criteria

• Age: 18 Years - 65 Years
• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: No
• Age Groups: Adult (18-64), Older Adult (65+)

You may qualify if:

• a current diagnosis of Major Depression as assessed by Structured Clinical Interview for DSM IV (First, Spitzer, Gibbon, \& Williams, 2002)
• a lifetime history of depression with onset before age 19 and either chronic persistence of symptoms or a history of at least three previous episodes of depression, two of which needed to have occurred during the last two years
• self-reported severity of current symptoms on a clinical level as indicated by Beck Depression Inventory-II (Beck, Steer, \& Brown, 1996) scores above 19
• age 25 to 60 thus excluding cases of late-onset depression, and e) fluency in spoken and written German.

You may not qualify if:

• history of psychosis or mania, current eating disorder, OCD, current self-harm, current substance abuse or dependence
• history of traumatic brain injury
• current treatment with CBT
• We allowed patients who were currently taking antidepressants into the study provided that the medication had not been changed during the last four weeks before entry into the study.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Freie Universität Berlin: lead
• Charite University, Berlin, Germany: collaborator

Related Publications (7)

• Auerbach RP, Stanton CH, Proudfit GH, Pizzagalli DA. Self-referential processing in depressed adolescents: A high-density event-related potential study. J Abnorm Psychol. 2015 May;124(2):233-45. doi: 10.1037/abn0000023. Epub 2015 Feb 2.

  PMID: 25643205 BACKGROUND

• Bornas, X., Noguera, M., Balle, M., Morillas-Romero, A., Aguayo-Siquier, B., Tortella-Feliu, M., & Llabrés, J. (2013). Long-Range Temporal Correlations in Resting EEG. Journal of Psychophysiology, 27(2), 60-66. doi:10.1027/0269-8803/a000087

  BACKGROUND

• Manoach DS, Agam Y. Neural markers of errors as endophenotypes in neuropsychiatric disorders. Front Hum Neurosci. 2013 Jul 18;7:350. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00350. eCollection 2013.

  PMID: 23882201 BACKGROUND

• Tang YY, Lu Q, Geng X, Stein EA, Yang Y, Posner MI. Short-term meditation induces white matter changes in the anterior cingulate. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2010 Aug 31;107(35):15649-52. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1011043107. Epub 2010 Aug 16.

  PMID: 20713717 BACKGROUND

• Weinberg A, Dieterich R, Riesel A. Error-related brain activity in the age of RDoC: A review of the literature. Int J Psychophysiol. 2015 Nov;98(2 Pt 2):276-299. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2015.02.029. Epub 2015 Mar 4.

  PMID: 25746725 BACKGROUND

• Fissler, M. Winnebeck, E., Schroeter, T. A., Gummersbach, M., Huntexburg, J. M., Gaertner, M., & Barnhofer, T. (in press). An Investigation of the Effects of Brief Mindfulness Training on Self-Reported Interoceptive Awareness, the Ability to Decenter, and Their Role in the Reduction of Depressive Symptoms. Mindfulness.

  RESULT

• Barnhofer T, Reess TJ, Fissler M, Winnebeck E, Grimm S, Gartner M, Fan Y, Huntenburg JM, Schroeter TA, Gummersbach M, Bajbouj M, Holzel BK. Effects of Mindfulness Training on Emotion Regulation in Patients With Depression: Reduced Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Activation Indexes Early Beneficial Changes. Psychosom Med. 2021 Jul-Aug 01;83(6):579-591. doi: 10.1097/PSY.0000000000000955.

  PMID: 34213860 DERIVED

MeSH Terms

Conditions

Depressive Disorder, Major

Condition Hierarchy (Ancestors)

Depressive Disorder; Mood Disorders; Mental Disorders

Study Officials

• Thorsten Barnhofer, PhD

  Freie Universität Berlin

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: RANDOMIZED
• Masking: SINGLE
• Who Masked: OUTCOMES ASSESSOR
• Purpose: BASIC SCIENCE
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
• PI Title: Heisenberg-Fellow

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: June 11, 2016
• First Posted: June 16, 2016
• Study Start: September 1, 2013
• Primary Completion: March 1, 2015
• Study Completion: March 1, 2015
• Last Updated: June 16, 2016

Record last verified: 2016-06

Data Sharing

• IPD Sharing: Will not share