NCMD Seminar Series Presents 'Cognitive Remediation and Therapy in Mood Disorders: Current Research'

This weeks seminar welcomed Dr Stephen Barton to deliver a talk on 'Cognitive Remediation and Therapy in Mood Disorders: Current Research'.

Dr Barton is Consultant Clinical Psychologist in the Regional Affective Disorders Service (RADS) in CNTW Foundation Trust. He is former programme director of the Newcastle CBT Diploma and has a long-standing interest in CBT for mood disorders. He is co-author of CBT for Depression – An Integrated Approach (Barton & Armstrong, 2019. Sage).

This talk introduced two treatment trials currently active in Newcastle: Cognitive Remediation in Bipolar Disorder (CRiB2) and COmplex Depression, Integrated Treatment (CODIT). Dr Barton reviewed the impact of bipolar disorder on cognitive functioning, particularly attention, learning, memory, psychomotor and executive functioning. Cognitive Remediation (CR) is a psychological intervention originally developed to address cognitive impairments in schizophrenia, now being applied in bipolar disorder. The talk also reflected on the challenges treating recurrent and persistent unipolar depression. Dr Barton then introduced recent developments in CBT for this difficult-to-treat group, integrating extant CBT models and adjusting for clinical complexity. Dr Barton further explained the CODIT study and it's focus on self regulation for people with difficult to treat depression. He went on to present the data for participants currently on the study, explaining the change in their self-rated positive affect and scores of depressive symptoms. Dr Barton explained the elements which are targeted throughout therapy sessions and how these change over time whilst providing a detailed description of the self-regulation model.

Thank you to Dr Stephen Barton for delivering a brilliant seminar this week!

To find out more about the CRiB2 study please see the link below.