An empirical analysis of autobiographical memory specificity subtypes in brief emotion-focused and client-centered treatments of depression.

Tali Zweig Boritz, Lynne Angus, Georges Monette, Laurie Hollis-Walker

Journal: Psychotherapy research : journal of the Society for Psychotherapy Research 2008;18(5):584-93

PMID: 18816008

Abstract

Overgeneral autobiographical memory (ABM) disclosure has been established as a key cognitive marker of clinical depression in experimental research studies. To determine the ecological validity of these findings for psychotherapy treatments of depression, the present study investigated the relationship between change in level of depression and ABM specificity in the context of early, middle, and late therapy session transcripts selected from 34 clients undergoing emotion-focused therapy and client-centered therapy in the York I Depression Study. A hierarchical linear modeling analysis demonstrated that clients disclosed significantly more specific ABMs over the course of therapy. There were no differences in ABM specificity between treatment groups. There was also no evidence that increased specificity differentiated between recovered and unchanged clients at treatment termination.

Address: Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. [email protected]

DOI: 10.1080/10503300802123245

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MeSH Terms: Adaptation, Psychological, Adult, Curriculum, Depressive Disorder, Emotions, Empathy, Female, Humans, Inservice Training, Life Change Events, Male, Mental Recall, Middle Aged, Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care, Person-Centered Psychotherapy, Personality Inventory, Professional-Patient Relations, Psychotherapy, Self Disclosure