About the Unified Protocol
What is the Unified Protocol? The Unified Protocol (UP) is a transdiagnostic therapy. This means the UP is meant to help people struggling to manage strong emotions, no matter what diagnoses they do or do not have. The UP is a form of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT).
It is a treatment designed to teach people skills to help them manage the experience of strong emotions. It was developed by David Barlow and a team of researchers at the Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders (CARD) at Boston University. Mental health concerns commonly treated with UP include: social anxiety, panic attacks, generalized anxiety, depressed mood, intrusive thoughts and compulsions, anger, trauma and stress-related disorders, eating disorders, problematic substance use, and impulsive behaviors.
The UP patient workbook and therapist guide are published as part of Oxford University Press’ Treatments that Work series, which only publishes evidence-based interventions. The patient workbook is designed to function as a stand-alone self-help book, but is most effective when used with therapist treatment. The therapist guide is ideal for clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and other mental health professionals.
Get in touch
We are always happy to answer your questions and discuss training opportunities.
Contact Us ▸
Advantages of the Unified Protocol
Before transdiagnostic treatments, therapists would often treat problems one at a time. However, patients usually have more than one concern that they want to address in therapy, so focusing on one problem or disorder did not match their lived experiences. As a result, patients and therapists were frustrated that existing treatments did not meet their needs. The UP was developed in direct response to these difficulties. It is one treatment designed to help with lots of problems. And it gets evidence-based treatments into the hands of psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and mental health counselors. The UP allows therapists to learn one treatment that will help them serve a wide range of patients.
For patients
As the leading transdiagnostic CBT treatment for emotional disorders, the UP has the ability to target difficulty managing emotions, no matter how these challenges present in day to day life. It is designed to manage multiple challenges at the same time and is not limited by only being able to help with one or two symptoms of specific diagnoses. For example, before the UP, if a patient presented with panic disorder and depression, it might lead to a discussion of what to target first, followed by addressing each problem one at a time. The UP eliminates such conversations by allowing the patient to focus on these problems at the same time. Like other cognitive-behavioral (CBT) interventions, the UP is goal-directed, relatively brief, and present-focused. It includes skills to set goals and maintain motivation, understand emotions, implement mindfulness, think flexibly, change unhelpful behavior, manage physical discomfort, and challenge oneself to enter difficult, emotion-provoking situations while engaging in more effective behaviors.
For clinicians
Any therapist who tries to keep up with the latest research on mental health treatment knows that this can be an overwhelming task! Even CBT alone has multiple treatments and corresponding manuals for each disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders (DSM). It can be difficult to know which protocol is best. On top of identifying the best treatment for each disorder, the therapist then has to learn a different approach for each disorder. The UP efficiently provides one intervention that is applicable to a broad range of disorders.
To date, the UP has been used to successfully treat panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, OCD, generalized anxiety disorder, PTSD, anxiety disorder NOS, major depressive disorder, persistent depressive disorder, bipolar depression, borderline personality disorder, non-suicidal self-injury, primary insomnia, and eating disorders. Clinicians need to learn only one protocol to provide research-supported treatment to their patients with diverse symptoms.