Ioana Cristea

Ioana Cristea
Ioana is Associate Professor at Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca and a Research Fellow at the University of Pisa, Italy. She holds a masters degree in Clinical Psychology, a Ph.D. in Psychology, and is a board certified cognitive-behavioral therapist. Her main research interests include critically appraising the efficiency and mechanisms of action of psychotherapy interventions.

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Crisis of faith? Instead of CBT, we should be worrying about meta-analyses

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Ioana Cristea appraises a recent meta-analysis, which examines whether the treatment effects of CBT have decreased over time. She finds a study with such significant limitations, that her blog ends up questioning the objectivity and reliability of meta-analyses.

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Another negative trial of cognitive bias modification: a case for Occam’s razor

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Ioana Cristea reviews a recent RCT that found no effects of positive imagery-based cognitive bias modification, delivered as a web-based treatment for people with depression.

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Limited benefits of cognitive bias modification for adolescents: is it time to move on?

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Ioana Cristea reviews a recent randomised controlled trial of cognitive bias modification to treat interpretation bias in adolescents. She argues that this new study adds weight to the ascertion that there are very limited, if any, mental health benefits for CBM interventions.

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Psychotherapy for medically unexplained physical symptoms

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Ioana Cristea reviews a recent Cochrane systematic review on non-pharmacological interventions for medically unexplained physical symptoms (MUPS). The review finds that psychotherapies for MUPS led to reduced symptom severity, but were associated with a higher drop-out rate than usual care.

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Internet-based CBT for chronic somatic conditions: problematic meta-analysis offers an overly enthusiastic appraisal

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Ioana Cristea critically reviews a recent meta-analysis of Internet-based CBT for patients with chronic somatic conditions. She concludes that the review authors are offering an overly positive interpretation of their results, and that we need more high quality studies before we can recommend online cognitive behaviour therapy for this population.

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Collaborative care for depression: psychological interventions, alone or in combination with medication, offer additional benefits

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Ioana Cristea reviews a recent systematic review and meta-analysis of collaborative care for depression, looking to identify factors predicting improvements. The study finds that collaborative care successfully improves both patient outcomes and the process of care for depression.

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Family-based CBT for early childhood OCD: efficient for white, non-minority, upper middle-class children

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Ioana Cristea reviews a recent RCT of family-based CBT for early childhood OCD and concludes that the results are impressive, but may not be applicable to poorer children from ethnic minorities.

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Psychotherapy for depression in older adults: promising results, but insufficient good quality research

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This recent meta-analysis confirms that psychotherapy has a moderate to high effect on depression in older adults. However, a note of caution is sounded because of publication bias and the low quality of several of the included studies.

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It’s all in the control group: wait-list control may exaggerate apparent efficacy of CBT for depression

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This blog should set the cat amongst the pigeons! Ioana Cristea reviews a recent network meta-analysis in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica and discovers that CBT supporters face some well-documented criticism that requires a considered response. Do join in with the discussion and tell us what you think of this new research.

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Psychotherapy for social functioning in depression: insufficient good quality research into an overlooked issue

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Social functioning is defined as the degree to which a person is able to fulfill different roles in social environments, such as home, work or relationships (Bosc, 2000). There is consistent evidence that depressed patients display considerable social functioning impairments, which add significantly to the burden of depression. In a recent article published in Psychological [read the full story…]