Background

Increasing an individual's ability to focus on concrete, specific detail, thus reducing the tendency toward overly broad, decontextualised generalisations about the self and world, is a target within cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). However, empirical investigation of the impact of within-treatment specificity on treatment outcomes is scarce. We evaluated whether the specificity of patient dialogue predicted a) end-of-treatment symptoms and b) session completion for CBT for common mental health issues.

Methods

This preregistered (https://osf.io/agr4t) study trained a deep learning model to score the specificity of patient dialogue in transcripts from 353,614 internet-enabled CBT sessions for common mental health disorders, delivered on behalf of UK NHS services. Data were from obtained from 65,030 participants (n = 47,308 female, n = 241 unstated) aged 18-94 years (M = 34.69, SD = 12.35). Depressive disorders were the most common (39.1 %) primary diagnosis. Primary outcome was end-of-treatment score on the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9). Secondary outcome was number of sessions attended.

Results

Linear mixed-effects models demonstrated that increased patient specificity significantly predicted lower post-treatment symptoms on the PHQ-9, although the size and direction of the effect varied depending on the type of therapeutic activity being completed. Effect sizes were consistently small. Higher patient specificity was associated with completing a greater number of sessions.

Limitations

We are unable to infer causation from our data.

Conclusions

Although effect sizes were small, an effect of specificity was observed across common mental health disorders. Further studies are needed to explore whether encouraging patient specificity during CBT may provide an enhancement of treatment attendance and treatment effects.