Treating depressive disorders with the Unified Protocol: A preliminary randomized evaluation

•UP patients demonstrated significant reductions in depressive symptoms.•Improvements for UP patients were maintained 12 months after treatment.•Improvements in depression favored the UP group, compared to the waitlist.•Improvements were not significant different between the UP and an active control. This study aims to examine the efficacy of the Unified Protocol for Transdiagnostic Treatment of Emotional Disorders (UP) for individuals diagnosed with a depressive disorder. Participants included 44 adults who met criteria for major depressive disorder, persistent depressive disorder, or another specified depressive disorder according to the Anxiety Disorder Interview Schedule (ADIS). These individuals represent a subset of patients from a larger clinical trial comparing the UP to single-disorder protocols (SDPs) for discrete anxiety disorders and a waitlist control (WLC) condition (Barlow et al., 2017); inclusion criteria for the parent study required participants to have a principal anxiety disorder. Significant reductions in depressive symptoms were observed within the UP condition across clinician-rated and self-report measures of depression from baseline to post-treatment, as well as to the 12-month follow-up assessment. Compared to the WLC group, individuals in the UP condition demonstrated significantly lower levels on our continuous, clinician-rated measure of depressive symptoms at post-treatment. There were no differences between the UP and SDP conditions on depressive symptoms at post-treatment or at the 12-month follow-up timepoint. In this exploratory set of analyses, the UP evidenced efficacy for reduction of depressive symptoms, adding to the growing support for its utility in treating depression.