Effectiveness of FAP Therapy in Curing Depression

This report provides an overview of different literature reviews conducted in the field of effectiveness of FAP therapy in curing depression. The analysis focuses on the interventions used in FAP therapy and its efficacy in treating depression. A comparison is made between problems occurring in interpersonal relationships under FAP sessions as Supportive Listening (SL) and a systematic review using PRISMA Flowchart to improve reporting standards.

A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW
ON THE EFFICACY OF
FUNCTIONAL ANALYTIC
PSYCHOTHERAPY (FAP),
FOR THE TREATMENT OF
DEPRESSION

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Literature Review........................................................................................................................3
Prisma Flowchart........................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
In this report, different literature review containing qualitative analysis pertaining to
efficacy of Functional Analytical Psychotherapy in treating and curing depression have been
identified and analysed. This analysis of review will help in identifying the effectiveness of FAP
therapy implementation and Prisma Flowchart has also been discussed.
MAIN BODY
Literature Review
Theme 1: FAP implementation in group therapy
Vandenberghe & Rego Leite (2018), has conducted research that whether Functional
Analytical Psychotherapy (FAP) is an effective treatment therapy for depression or not. The
researcher conducted his research on 21 adult women by conducting weekly sessions of 2 hours
regularly for 16 weeks. All these women were clinically depressed patients who were treated as
per the interventions of FAP and these were implemented in group sessions through which the
patients were taught ways of living their life in healthier manner. The researcher implemented
FAP therapy so that these depressed patients could address the complaints and difficulties in
interpersonal communication in a much more effective manner. After conducting such sessions
regularly for 16 weeks, it could be concluded that the therapy was effective.
Researcher implemented BDI score i.e. Beck Depression Inventory to evaluate the
effectiveness of treatment through FAP and He also implemented Jacobson and Traux' Method
in order to verify that the therapy sessions conducted by him are clinically correct i.e. of
significance. The researcher concluded that collectively there were 17 clinically moderately
depressed patients who showed improvement by entering into non-clinical range and 4 clinically
mildly depressed patients who also depicted improvement in their mental health. Significantly,
out of 21 adult women, 12 of them showed signs of reliable as well as clinically significant
improvement and a total of 15 patients who involved in follow-up activities showed signs of
maintained and continuous improvement over 2 years thus concluding that FAP is an extremely
effective therapy for treatment of depression.
Theme 2: FAP versus Watchful Waiting
As per the view of Maitland & et.al., (2016), it was further researched that whether the
hypothesis that whether FAP works as a change agent in targeting issue of social connectedness.
They studied 22 participants who faced issues in formulating interpersonal relationships. He
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aimed to compare the efficacy of treatment of clinically depressed patients through FAP as
compared to Watchful Waiting (WW). They used many factors which were Fear of Intimacy
Scale, Statistical Manual related to Mental Disorders etc. Both the instruments depicted that FAP
treatment is superior in curing over WW and on further analysis of Adherence in sessions, it was
concluded that FAP was much more beneficial and had satisfied and happier patients.
In order to select patients out of the available population, researcher set a minimum score
of 1 standard deviation and out of 52 potential participants, only 22 were finalised. FAP and WW
sessions were conducted separately on the selected students by dividing them into two groups.
After implementing all the tests, it was concluded that the hypothesis holds true i.e. FAP fulfils
the assumption that it is solely the most effective treatment in curing depression. It was further
concluded that using group therapy sessions, effective relationships could be formed that could
help in curing of depression.
Theme 3: Quantitative Synthesis of previous studies
According to the study conducted by Singh & O’Brien (2018), FAP is the only therapy
for treating depression which can cure a patient outside the clinical treatment that they receive
i.e. they are effective even out of the clinic. For the present study, researcher used 20 studies that
were conducted on a single subject and quantitative analysis was performed on these studies.
Researcher conducted this study because there is not much research that has been conducted on
FAP as a therapy and researcher evaluated the efficacy of these treatments.
In order to analyse the accumulated data, various statistical tools were implemented i.e.
percentage of non-overlapping data (PND), reliable change index (RCI), split middle trend
estimation (SMTE) and Swanson's. PND and SMTE statistical tools concluded that when the
average results were classified form questionably effective to fairly effective criteria, it was
found that RCI give consistently reliable results whereas Swanson gave unrealistic and deviating
results. But after implementation of these statistical; tools, it was found that FAP is effective
even out of the clinical treatment as it was found that out of 20 cases in 13 cases, the patients
proved to maintain the out of clinic recovery.
Theme 4: Comparison of FAP with SL
Maitland & Gaynor (2016), further researched FAP is an interpersonal therapy approach
where, as soon as client shares any problem, therapist provides him a solution i.e. there is regular
interaction. The researcher included 13 participants in his research comparison was made
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between problems occurring in interpersonal relationships under FAP sessions as Supportive
Listening (SL). When the results of these sessions were evaluated, it was concluded that SL is a
more effective and productive session giving better results.
It was concluded that in order to conduct in-session treatments in a better manner, SL can
be used in absence of FAP implementation where it contributes highly resulting in more engaged
sessions and therapeutic alliances are stronger. It was also concluded that Therapeutic Alliance
might fulfil the purpose of FAP in its absence because the actions are similar and addresses the
problem in a similar manner.
Prisma Flowchart
PRISMA Flowchart is used while writing up a systematic review so that reporting under
systematic review and meta analysis can improve. It is also used for doing Literature Review and
involves a checklist of 27 items. Collectively, it helps in improving the standard of research
conducted and review done i.e. the relevance of the article selected gets improved.
First, relevant scorecards are identified at the initial phase of searching for the topic
which were 100 and additional records are also identified which are related to the records that
were identified earlier amounting to 10. In the next phase, duplicacy of these records if any was
removed and screening of these records take place which left up 70 records. Only relevant
articles which were found eligible were selected amounting to 40 and remaining 30 were
removed. Out of these articles, full text is analysed and it was found that only 13 articles were
relevant and remaining 27 were removed. After this, 9 articles were selected for qualitative study
and remaining 4 were selected for quantitative study.
CONCLUSION
In this report, different literature reviews done in the field of effectiveness of FAP
therapy in curing depression were discussed and its interventions were analysed thus proving its
efficacy in the treatment.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Maitland & et.al., (2016). A randomized controlled trial of functional analytic psychotherapy
versus watchful waiting: Enhancing social connectedness and reducing anxiety and
avoidance. Behavior Analysis: Research and Practice. 16(3). 103.
Maitland, D. W., & Gaynor, S. T. (2016). Functional analytic psychotherapy compared with
supportive listening: An alternating treatments design examining distinctiveness, session
evaluations, and interpersonal functioning. Behavior Analysis: Research and Practice.
16(2). 52.
Singh, R. S., & O’Brien, W. H. (2018). A quantitative synthesis of functional analytic
psychotherapy single-subject research. Journal of contextual behavioral science. 7. 35-46.
Vandenberghe, L., & do Rego Leite, U. (2018). Functional Analytic Group Therapy (FAGT) for
Depression: a Pilot Study. The Psychological Record. 68(2). 231-238.
Online
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