Understanding treatment non-responders: A qualitative study of depressed adolescents' experiences of ‘unsuccessful’ psychotherapy

Objectives

This paper aimed to explore the experiences of depressed adolescents who completed but did not ‘respond’ to standard psychotherapy, based on a lack of improvement in pre-post symptoms scores.

Design

This was a qualitative study employing interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA).

Method

Seventy-seven adolescents with moderate to severe depression were interviewed as part of a qualitative arm of a randomised controlled trial. Five adolescents' post-treatment interviews were purposively sampled, based on lack of improvement on pre-post symptom scores, and adolescents still scoring above the clinical threshold for depression. The interviews were analysed using IPA.

Results

Adolescents made sense of their depression as part of their identity and held negative expectations of therapy. Some aspects of therapy brought up intolerable feelings that contributed to disengagement in the therapeutic process and culminated in disappointing and hopeless endings. On the other hand, where a stronger therapeutic relationship was developed, some participants experienced certain improvements.

Conclusions

Findings highlight how actively exploring the adolescent's therapy expectations, developing a strong early therapeutic relationship and being mindful of the potential impact of endings are important in therapeutic work with adolescents with depression, especially where they may have a strong sense of hopelessness and self-criticism. Moreover, the finding that adolescents experienced improvements in other domains despite a lack of symptom reduction highlights the need to review how treatment outcomes are currently defined. Integrating individual perspectives of therapy with quantitative outcome measures can provide a more nuanced insight of treatment effects.     

Genomic sequencing in a cohort of individuals with fibular aplasia,tibial campomelia,and oligosyndactyly (FATCO) syndrome

Fibular aplasia, tibial campomelia, and oligosyndactyly (FATCO) syndrome (MIM 246570) is a rare disorder characterized by specific skeletal findings (fibular aplasia, shortened or bowed tibia, and oligosyndactyly of the foot and/or hand). Typically, no other anomalies, craniofacial dysmorphism, or developmental delays are associated. Here we report three unrelated individuals with limb anomalies consistent with FATCO syndrome who have been followed clinically for 5 years. Genetic testing of previously reported individuals with FATCO syndrome has not revealed a genetic diagnosis. However, no broader sequencing approaches have been reported. We describe the results of the three individuals with FATCO syndrome from exome and genome sequencing, all of which was nondiagnostic. Our study suggests that FATCO syndrome is not the result of a simple monogenic etiology.