Bernhard T. Baune, PhD, MD, on Using Psychological Treatments to Improve Cognition in Patients With Depression

In this video, Bernhard T. Baune, PhD, MD, discusses psychological treatments that may improve cognition in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD).

Dr. Baune, head of the Department of Mental Health at the University of Münster, Germany, presented "Advances in Understanding Neurobiological Underpinnings and Treatment Interfaces of Cognition in Depression" at the Psych Congress 2020 preconference on psychopharmacology.

TRANSCRIPT:

Psychological treatments vary, of course. They range from cognitive behavioral therapy to specific trainings, like cognitive trainings, for example. Probably the more commonly known approaches include cognitive remediation therapy, which comes from the more old age sphere and now making its way more into mood disorders and depression in particular.

Cognitive remediation therapy is a treatment which uses different principles. One is cognitive training. Cognitive training, for example, on improving memory function, but also using psychological techniques to reduce performance anxiety, for example, and thereby by reducing performance anxiety, enhancing secondarily their cognitive abilities.

It does combine those two. Then, the spectrum arranges into specific cognitive training programs, for example, where modification bias, which is an important bias in depression, can be trained and improved or where memory can be trained and improved.

These programs, they come more from the anxiety part of research and clinical practice and now make more way into MDD treatment. Some first studies are encouraging, but I think we need more evidence to support their broad use in clinical practice in MDD.