Abstract
This study is inspired by previous case series replications of Hermeneutic Single-Case Efficacy Design which aimedto evaluate the effectiveness of a manualised transactional analysis treatment for depressive disorders and depressive personality.
We address problems and difficulties that emerged in previous case series,such as: spending time in training a group of people to conduct the hermeneutic analysis, organising the involvement of external judges to give the final adjudication, and dealing with inconsistencies between quantitative and qualitative data.
This study suggests a simplified method to conduct the hermeneutic analysis that requiresone person only, maintaining its validity. We integrated hermeneutic design with the pragmatic case evaluation methodology in order to follow pre-defined criteria in analysing qualitative material. Furthermore, we present a way to use the Script System to detect changes in depressive symptomatology and depressive personality.
We tested this approach to HSCED in the case of ‘Giovanni, a 17-year old white Italian malewho attended 16sessionsof transactional analysis psychotherapy with a white Italian woman specialsing in psychotherapy with 2 years of clinical experience. The clientsatisfied DSM-5 criteria for moderate major depressive disorder and generalised anxiety disorder. This is the second investigation which has evaluated the effectiveness of transactional analysis psychotherapy for depressed adolescents.
