2015/01/01 by Paul L. Hewitt, Samuel F. Mikail, Gordon L. Flett +5 · 2 citations
Psychology · Medicine · #Perfectionism, Procrastination, Anxiety Studies #Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes #Maternal Mental Health During Pregnancy and Postpartum #Perfectionism (psychology) #Psychology #Distress #Clinical psychology #Psychodynamics #Interpersonal communication #Psychodynamic psychotherapy #Anxiety #Psychotherapist #Interpersonal psychotherapy #Psychiatry #Randomized controlled trial #Medicine
paper · doi:10.1037/pst0000016
openalex publication_date 2015/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/11
This study sought to determine whether clinically significant improvement could be obtained using a psychodynamic/interpersonal group treatment based on a comprehensive conceptualization of perfectionism. A sample of 71 community-recruited perfectionistic individuals participated in the University of British Columbia Perfectionism Treatment Study. Eighteen of these participants were initially nonrandomly assigned to a waitlist control condition. All participants completed measures of perfectionism traits, perfectionistic self-presentation, and automatic perfectionistic thoughts, as well as measures of distress including depression, anxiety, and interpersonal problems at pretreatment, posttreatment, and at a 4-month follow-up. Multilevel modeling demonstrated that perfectionism levels decreased with large effect sizes and that these decreases were associated with reductions in distress measures. Clinically significant decreases were found in all perfectionism components, and posttreatment scores on most variables were significantly lower in the treatment condition versus the waitlist control condition. The findings suggest that psychodynamic/interpersonal group treatment is effective in treating components of perfectionism.