Background
ASD, posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depressive symptom reduction, depressive disorder, TFT, PTSD, insomnia, depressive symptoms, MDD, disability, trauma
DISORDER, EVENTS, REMISSION, EYE
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a common, recurrent mental disorder and a leading cause of disability worldwide, related to poor health behaviors, increased mortality risk and high societal costs [One of the most potent and robust risk factors for MDD is exposure to childhood trauma (CT), often defined as the experience of emotional/physical/sexual abuse and/or emotional/ physical neglect before the age of 18 [Given the central role of trauma in patients with MDD and CT, trauma-focused therapy (TFT) may be effective for this MDD subtype. Effective, evidence-based TFTs, such as trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT), prolonged exposure (PE), imagery rescripting (ImRs) and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) are well investigated and first-choice treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) [The overall aim and primary objective of the RESET-psychotherapy (REStoring mood after Early life Trauma) study is to investigate whether TFT as an adjunctive to treatment as usual (TAU) (experimental condition) leads to more reduction of depressive symptoms at post-treatment when compared to TAU only (control condition) in MDD patients with CT. Secondary objectives are: 1) to determine whether patients who receive adjunctive TFT show more depressive symptom reduction during treatment and at 6-month follow-up than patients who only receive TAU, 2) to examine whether patients in the experimental condition show more improvement in other clinical outcomes in comparison to patients in the control condition (i.e. MDD remission rate, anxiety symptom severity, insomnia, subjective stress and overall functioning and disability), 3) to examine potential mediators (e.g. social support and stressful life events) and moderators (e.g. comorbid PTSD / acute stress disorder (ASD), timing/duration/context of CT, resilience, personality and coping) of the hypothesized beneficial effect of TFT, and 4) to understand neurobiological mechanisms of the expected clinical improvement following TFT.