Abstract Body

In 2012, the Danish government introduced a national action plan for telemedicine comprising, amongst other initiatives, Internet-based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (iCBT) for adult depression later also including anxiety. First introduced by Dr. Selmi in 1991 iCBT has since been researched extensively with positive results - even comparable to CBT delivered face-to-face. However, not much is known about the effectiveness once iCBT is implemented in routine care.

During this presentation, the nationwide iCBT clinic Internetpsykiatrien.dk is described as well as the results from the first cohort of patients undergoing treatment.

A naturalistic cohort design was used including patients from April 1st, 2016 to April 1st, 2017. Primary outcomes were PHQ-9 for depressed patients and GAD-7 for anxious patients measured pre- and post-treatment. Primary analyses were conducted using a linear mixed effects model with random slope and intercept. Results were benchmarked to published effectiveness and efficacy trials of guided iCBT.

A total of N=203 patients were included in the analyses (depression n=60, anxiety n=143), mainly female (depression 78.3%, anxiety 65.7%) with a mean age of M=36.03 (SD 10.97) for the depressed patients and M=36.80 (SD 13.55) for the anxious. The primary analyses revealed large and significant reductions in the symptom levels of depression (beta=-6.27, SE 0.83, P<.001, d=1.0) and anxiety (beta=-3.78, SE 0.43, P<.001, d=1.1).

These results appear to support the hypothesis, that iCBT can be clinically effective even in a routine care setting. This finding is important as depression and anxiety are prevalent, costly and vastly undertreated disorders.