Social Phobia and Evasiveness: Trial Protocol for a Feasibility, Superiority, Randomized Controlled Trial of the Effect of Modified Collaborative Assessment vs. Standard Assessment on Patients’ Readiness for Psychotherapy (CO-ASSM-RCT).

BackgroundEvasive personality disorder (EPD) and social phobia (SP) have substantial costs to the patients and their families, and great economic costs to the community. While psychotherapy can be an efficient treatment, a large percentage of patients drop-out during treatment. Little is known about what can be done in order to decrease dropout from psychotherapy in general, including how to increase a patient’s readiness for psychotherapy. MethodsWe describe a feasibility randomized controlled trial of 42 individuals with a clinical diagnosis of either SP or evasive personality disorder, who are to initiate psychotherapeutic treatment in Danish outpatient mental health services. They will be randomized in a 1:1 ratio to either assessment-as-usual and receive no further assessment, or to a Modified Collaborative Assessment (MCA) provided as a pre-treatment intervention before psychotherapy initiation. MCA will included a battery of psychological tests designed to thoroughly assess the patients’ psychopathology. The tests is administered in collaboration with the patient including a detailed oral and written feedback. We hypothesize that the patients randomized to MCA will reach higher levels of readiness for psychotherapy as assessed with the University of Rhode Island Change Assessment Scale (URICA) and have lower dropout-rates than assessment-as-usual. DiscussionThis protocol assess the feasibility, efficacy, acceptability, and safety of an intervention aimed at changing the readiness for participation in psychotherapy for patients with SP and EVP. Results from this feasibility study could guide the development of future large-scale trials of MCA and procedures for MCA treatment fidelity assessment.