Development and Validation of an Online Treatment Program for Adjustment Disorders

Adjustment Disorder (AD) is a highly prevalent health problem that causes a great suffering and can result in suicidal thinking and/or behavior. However, unlike mood and anxiety disorders, AD has received little attention from scientific community and very few studies have been carried out to develop evidence-based treatments (EBT) for this problem. Besides, although a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) protocol is currently available for the treatment of AD, many patients with this diagnosis remain untreated. There is therefore an evident need to design strategies that guarantee the patients receive adequate treatment. A feasible solution might be self-administered computerized CBT (cCBT). A growing body of research has found that cCBT is highly effective for anxiety and depressive disorders, achieving clinical improvements similar to those obtained with traditional face-to-face interventions. The use of internet to administer EBT allows reducing the contact time between the patient and the therapist and this way reach people who otherwise would not receive treatment. Therefore, the development of a cCBT for AD will mean an improvement in the delivery and dissemination of the current treatment programs. This is especially relevant for this problem considering the scarce attention received by the scientific community and the high interference caused in the patients' life. As far as we know, there is no cCBT program specifically designed for the treatment of AD. As a consequence, further research in this area is needed.