Clinical Trials Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2023. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Psychiatry. Aug 19, 2023; 13(8): 551-562
Published online Aug 19, 2023. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v13.i8.551
Randomized control trial of a culturally adapted behavioral activation therapy for Muslim patients with depression in Pakistan
Saima Dawood, Ghazala Mir, Robert M West
Saima Dawood, Centre for Clinical Psychology, University of the Punjab, Lahore Punjab 54590, Pakistan
Ghazala Mir, Robert M West, Leeds Institute of Health Sciences, School of Medicine, The University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, West Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom
Author contributions: Dawood S was involved in design of the study, led the data collection and conduct of research on data sites, contributed to analysis and drafted the write-up of results; West RM contributed to the trial design, led statistical analysis and contributed to the writing-up of results and final paper; Mir G developed the concept for the study, contributed to the methodology of the randomized control trial and writing of the final paper and gave final approval of the version to be published; All authors contributed and approved the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: This study has been reviewed and approved by the School of Medicine Research and Ethics Committee at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom, No. MERC-19-034; and the National Bioethics Committee, Pakistan, No. NBC-459/20/726.
Clinical trial registration statement: This study is registered at ISRCTN, No. 35418604.
Informed consent statement: All study participants provided informed written consent prior to their inclusion in the current study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Ghazala Mir, PhD, Professor, Leeds Institute of Health Sciences, School of Medicine, The University of Leeds, Clarendon Way, Leeds LS2 9JT, West Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom. g.mir@leeds.ac.uk
Received: January 22, 2023
Peer-review started: January 22, 2023
First decision: March 1, 2023
Revised: March 10, 2023
Accepted: May 5, 2023
Article in press: May 5, 2023
Published online: August 19, 2023
Processing time: 206 Days and 13.9 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Behavioral activation therapy that is culturally adapted for Muslims (BA-M) is a more effective treatment for depression in comparison to cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) for Muslim populations within the Pakistani cultural context. Increased engagement with the therapy appears to be the key reason for the significantly lower depression scores of patients receiving BA-M. As this treatment can be delivered by practitioners with much less psychological training than CBT, it is particularly suitable for Muslim patients in low resource settings.