title: Transfer of manualized Short Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (STPP) for social phobia into clinical practice: study protocol for a cluster-randomised controlled trial.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Psychodynamic psychotherapy is frequently applied in the treatment of social phobia. Nevertheless, there has been a lack of studies on the transfer of manualized treatments to routine psychodynamic practice. Our study is the first one to examine the effects of additional training in a manualized Short Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (STPP) procedure on outcome in routine psychotherapy for social phobia. This study is an extension to a large multi-site RCT (N = 512) comparing the efficacy of STPP to Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) of Social Phobia.
  
  
  METHODS
  The manualized treatment is designed for a time limited approach with 25 individual sessions of STPP over 6 months. Private practitioners will be randomized to training in manualized STPP vs. treatment as usual without a specific training (control condition). We plan to enrol a total of 105 patients (84 completers). Assessments will be conducted before treatment starts, after 8 and 15 weeks, after 25 treatment sessions, at the end of treatment, 6 months and 12 months after termination of treatment. The primary outcome measure is the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale. Remission from social phobia is defined scoring with 30 or less points on this scale.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We will investigate how the treatment can be transferred from a controlled trial into the less structured setting of routine clinical care. This question represents Phase IV of psychotherapy research. It combines the benefits of randomized controlled and naturalistic research. The study is genuinely designed to promote faster and more widespread dissemination of effective interventions. It will answer the questions whether manualized STPP can be implemented into routine outpatient care, whether the new methods improve treatment courses and outcomes and whether treatment effects reached in routine psychotherapeutic treatments are comparable to those of the controlled, strictly manualized treatment of the main study.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  German Clinical Trials Register (DRKS) DRKS00000570.
authors.affiliation: Clinic of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany. joerg.wiltink@unimedizin-mainz.de
authors.forename: Jörg
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wiltink
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ruckes
authors.forename: Antje
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Haselbacher
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Canterino
authors.forename: Falk
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Leichsenring
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Joraschky
authors.forename: Frank
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Leweke
authors.forename: Karin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Pöhlmann
authors.forename: Manfred E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Beutel
mesh_terms: D016000:Cluster Analysis; D005858:Germany; D006801:Humans; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy*; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D011614:Psychotherapy, Brief; D012107:Research Design; D013997:Time Factors; D016896:Treatment Outcome