Clinical Judgments of Response Profiles: Do They Tell Us What Matters for Whom?

DeRubeis and colleagues (2014a) proposed that psychotherapy research has been limited by underappreciated variability in how patients respond to psychotherapy. They proposed that the relationship between the quality of therapy and outcome varies according to patient response profiles. In a study of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for depression, we tested clinician ratings of this construct as a moderator of the relationship between therapist adherence to cognitive or behavioral methods in predicting symptom change. Patients (N = 125) participated in CBT for depression. Assessors rated response profiles following the intake and therapists rated them after the first session. We collected data on adherence at the first five sessions and symptoms at the first six sessions. Therapist ratings following the first session, but not assessor ratings at intake, moderated the relationship between each form of adherence and symptom change. Patients given lower ratings (identifying them as spontaneous remitting or easy patients) had a stronger relationship between adherence and greater symptom change, with this relationship reversed such that adherence was related to less robust symptom change for those with the highest ratings (intractable or challenging patients). Our findings suggest promise for clinical evaluation of response profiles. We encourage future research evaluating refinements to such measures.