Objectives: The “trans-diagnostic” approach to mental disorders is focused on the cognitive, emotional and behavioural dysfunctions underlying several psychopathological conditions. It has been recently introduced into clinical practice with the aim of overcoming limitations in classical nosography and in diagnosis-specific treatments. However, it is still unclear whether and to what extent such treatments have better outcomes when compared to classical diagnosis-specific approaches. The present review aims to analyse the clinical efficacy of cognitive-behavioural trans-diagnostic treatments in patients suffering from emotional disorders.
Method: The following bibliographic databases were searched: Pubmed, Google Scholar and Discovery Sapienza. The randomized clinical trials published from 2017 to 2020 and addressing the efficacy of the trans-diagnostic approach to emotional disorders were reviewed.
Results: The selected studies showed that the efficacy of trans-diagnostic approach in emotional disorders is higher when compared with classical treatments and that both trans-diagnostic and diagnosis-specific treatments are equally effective.
Discussion: The trans-diagnostic cognitive-behavioral treatments can be considered as an effective alternative to diagnosis-specific ones, especially when comorbidity between different emotional disorders is present.