The therapeutic alliance in a naturalistic psychiatric setting: temporal relations with depressive symptom change.

Objective: Numerous studies have reported associations between the therapeutic alliance and depressive symptom improvement in outpatient samples. However, little is known regarding the temporal relationship between the alliance and symptom change among relatively severely depressed patients receiving treatment in naturalistic, psychiatric hospital settings.

Method: Adult patients with major depression (n = 103) receiving combined cognitive behavioral therapy and pharmacological treatment at a psychiatric hospital completed repeated assessments of the therapeutic alliance and depressive symptoms, as well as a pretreatment assessment of their expectation of symptom improvement.

The role of a fitness intervention on people with serious psychiatric disabilities.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects a health education and exercise program would have in limiting weight gain and in improving fitness and psychological parameters in adults with mood or psychotic disorders. Thirty volunteers were randomly assigned to the healthy lifestyle group (HL) or a control group. The HL group engaged in exercise for 12 weeks.