The Impact of Decentering on Self-Esteem in Patients with Depression: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Depression is one of the most prevalent mental disorders. Besides low self-esteem, several associated symptoms include more negative and less positive affect, increased rumination, and reduced resource awareness. Identifying brief interventions that target these symptoms, particularly those that do not rely on external validation, is therefore of high clinical relevance. This experimental study aims to investigate whether a brief decentering intervention can improve patients‘ self-esteem, affect, rumination, and resource awareness in the short term. Additionally, the influence of depression severity on changes in self-esteem will be examined. 46 German-speaking participants (18-80 years) with diagnosed depression will be recruited. After providing sociodemographic information, participants complete state questionnaires measuring decentering, self-esteem, affect, rumination, and resource awareness. They are then randomly assigned to either a decentering group, listening to an intervention fostering non-judgmental observation of thoughts, or to an active control group, listening to a neutral audio file. Subsequently, participants complete the questionnaires again before being debriefed.