Tackling Depression and Anxiety: A Working Memory Intervention

Not Applicable

Completed

• Conditions: Major Depression; Anxiety Disorder
• Interventions: Behavioral: Working memory training; Behavioral: Placebo training

• Registration Number: NCT02119923
• Lead Sponsor: Erasmus Medical Center

Brief Summary

Anxiety and depression are both associated with impairments in executive functions, including working memory (WM) which is needed to maintain and manipulate goal-relevant information. Due to these WM impairments anxious and depressed individuals have difficulties inhibiting and shifting from irrelevant (negative) information and updating goal relevant information. This study explored whether training WM decreases these impairments and reduces clinical symptoms and rumination. Eighty-four individuals diagnosed with major depression and forty-nine individuals with an anxiety diagnosis executed WM or control tasks three times a week, during four weeks. Before, after training and at a two months follow-up measurement depression and anxiety symptoms, WM capacity and rumination behaviour were assessed. Training WM did only result in a reduction of anxiety symptoms in the depression group. These findings are inconsistent with promising results of individual studies showing training WM result in an enlarged WM capacity and a decrease of psychopathological symptoms. However, our results are in line with recent meta-analyses and reviews which show that WM training do not lead to generalized effects and therefore, doubt the clinical relevance of WM training programs.

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2011-04
• Primary Completion: 2011-10
• Study Completion: 2011-10
• Status Verified: 2014-04
• Study First Submitted: 2014-04-08
• Study First Submitted QC: 2014-04-18
• Last Update Submitted: 2014-04-18
• Study First Posted: 2014-04-22
• Last Update Posted: 2014-04-22

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 240

Inclusion Criteria

• Major depression diagnosis
• Anxiety disorder diagnosis

Exclusion Criteria

• Current psychosis
• Current substance dependency

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Working memory training	Working memory training	-
Placebo training	Placebo training	-

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Beck Depression Inventory Second Edition (BDI-II) score change between pre and post training and at follow-up measurement (2 months after post measurement)	Pre training (baseline), post training (4 weeks after baseline, training starts 1 day after baseline) and follow-up (2 months after post-test)	Depression is measured with the BDI-II

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) scores change from pre to post training and to follow up measurement (2 months after post measurement)	Pre training (baseline), post training (4 weeks after baseline, training starts 1 day after baseline) and follow-up (2 months after post-test)	The STAI measures state, trait and total anxiety

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

Erasmus University Rotterdam; 🇳🇱 Rotterdam, Zuid Holland, Netherlands