W. Kuyken et al., Response to cognitive therapy in depression: The role of maladaptive beliefs and personality disorders, J CONS CLIN, 69(3), 2001, pp. 560-566
This study examined whether personality disorder status and beliefs that ch
aracterize personality disorders affect response to cognitive therapy. In a
naturalistic study, 162 depressed outpatients with and without a personali
ty disorder were followed over the course of cognitive therapy. As would be
hypothesized by cognitive theory (A. T. Beck & A. Freeman, 1990), it was n
ot personality disorder status but rather maladaptive avoidant and paranoid
beliefs that predicted variance in outcome. However, pre-to posttherapy co
mparisons suggested that although patients with or without comorbidity resp
ond comparably to "real-world" cognitive therapy, they report more severe d
epressive symptomatology at intake and more residual symptoms at terminatio
n.