The Efficacy of Short-Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy for Depressive Disorders with Comorbid Personality Disorder

The presence of comorbid personality disorder (PD) is one of the factors that can make the treatment of depression unsuccessful. Short-term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (STPP) has been shown efficacious in the treatment of personality and depressive disorders (DD). However, the efficacy of STPP for comorbid DD and PD has not been systematically evaluated. In this study, data from patients meeting criteria for both DD and PD participating from randomized controlled trials of STPP was collected, systematically reviewed, and meta-analyzed where possible. Eight studies were included, 6 with major depression and 2 with minor depressive disorders. Pre- to post- treatment effects sizes were large (d = 1.00-1.27), suggesting symptom improvement during STPP, and these gains were maintained in follow-ups averaging over 1.5 years. For major depression, no differences were found comparing STPP to other psychotherapies, and STPP was found superior to a wait-list condition in one study. STPP may have had an advantage over other therapy controls in treating minor depression as noted in ratings of general psychopathology. Patients with Cluster A/B and C PD were responsive to STPP, with the majority of all studied patients showing clinically significant change on self-report measures. Within the limits of this study, these findings suggest that STPP warrants consideration as a first line treatment for combined personality disorder and depression. Future research directions are proposed.