Speaker
Presentation in English
BRÍGIDA CAIADO
UNIVERSITY OF COIMBRA. PORTUGAL
Brígida Caiado holds a PhD in Clinical and Health Psychology from the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the University of Coimbra, and works as a clinical and health psychologist in hospital care at the Local Health Unit of Viseu Dão-Lafões.
She is an integrated member of the Center for Research in Neuropsychology and Cognitive-Behavioral Intervention (CINEICC) at the University of Coimbra, where she is involved in several research projects in the fields of parenting, emotional disorders, and cognitive-behavioral interventions. She is also responsible for research in clinical and health psychology at the Local Health Unit of Viseu Dão-Lafões.
Her doctoral project focused on the adaptation, validation, and efficacy study of the Unified Protocol for the transdiagnostic treatment of emotional disorders in children within the Portuguese population. She is also involved in studies of other versions of the Unified Protocol for Children in Portugal. She is certified as both a therapist and a trainer in this protocol by the University of Miami, has extensive clinical experience in its application, and is one of the professionals responsible for training others in this intervention in Portugal.
Unified Protocol for Children and Adolescents in Portugal: From Prevention to Transdiagnostic Intervention for Emotional Disorders
The Unified Protocol (UP) is a cognitive-behavioral approach designed for the transdiagnostic treatment of emotional disorders in children (UP-Children) and adolescents (UP-Adolescents). This approach focuses on promoting emotion regulation and integrates cognitive, behavioral, and contextual techniques into a single protocol, allowing intervention across a wide range of emotional disorders. Parents are actively involved in treatment, as co-therapists and also as targets of intervention – aiming to enhance parents’ own emotion regulation skills, increase awareness of parenting behaviors that may contribute to the development and maintenance of their children’s emotional difficulties (e.g., overprotection, criticism, inconsistency, and maladaptive modeling of emotional expression and regulation), and promote the adoption of more adaptive parenting behaviors. In the UP-Children, parents are involved throughout the entire treatment, including dedicated parent sessions while in the UP-Adolescents, parental involvement is tailored and negotiated in collaboration with the adolescent.
Originally developed in the United States, Portugal has been one of the pioneering countries in studying this intervention. In this symposium, several studies conducted in Portugal with the UP-Children and UP-Adolescents will be presented.
The UP-Children has been examined in Portugal in its standard format (15 weekly sessions of 90 minutes involving both children and parents) through feasibility studies and randomized controlled trials, demonstrating its efficacy in treating childhood emotional disorders and modifying dysfunctional parenting behaviors. The first presentation, delivered by Brígida Caiado, will provide a synthesis of the studies conducted in Portugal and their main findings, then focusing on a specific study examining the impact of the UP-Children on key transdiagnostic mechanisms underlying childhood emotional disorders, such as negative affect, distress tolerance, and mindfulness.
In addition, alternative formats of UP-Children have been developed in Portugal, including a blended version combining faceto- face and online sessions, aimed at reducing barriers to access and optimizing therapist resources: The Emotions Detectives In-Out. In the second presentation, Helena Moreira will present the results of a randomized controlled trial comparing the efficacy of the blended version of the UP-Children (Emotions Detectives In-Out) with an active control condition (Coping Cat). Changes in key child outcomes, including anxiety and depressive symptoms and the interference of symptomatology in children’s and family functioning, will be presented. In a third presentation, Bárbara Pereira will present the study assessing predictors of treatment adherence and treatment response in children who received the blended format of the UP-Children.
Finally, the UP-Adolescents has been adapted in Portugal into a preventive format that incorporates an additional selfcompassion component (UP-A Kind). In the fourth and final presentation, Inês Maçãs-Carvalho will present the first findings from a clinical trial conducted in Portuguese public schools with adolescents from the 7th to 9th grades, implemented as a universal preventive program.
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