Abstract
PurposePeople differ significantly in their response to psychological intervention, with some benefitting more from treatment than others. According to the recently proposed theoretical framework of vantage sensitivity, some of this variability may be due to individual differences in environmental sensitivity, the inherent ability to register, and process external stimuli. In this paper, we apply the vantage sensitivity framework to the field of psychiatry and clinical psychology, proposing that some people are more responsive to the positive effects of psychological intervention due to heightened sensitivity.MethodsAfter presenting theoretical frameworks related to environmental sensitivity, we review a selection of recent studies reporting individual differences in the positive response to psychological intervention.ResultsA growing number of studies report that some people benefit more from psychological intervention than others as a function of genetic, physiological, and psychological characteristics. These studies support the vantage sensitivity proposition that treatment response is influenced by factors associated with heightened sensitivity to environmental influences. More recently, studies have also shown that sensitivity can be measured with a short questionnaire which appears to predict the response to psychological intervention.ConclusionsVantage sensitivity is a framework with significant relevance for our understanding of widely observed heterogeneity in treatment response. It suggests that variability in response to treatment is partly influenced by people’s differing capacity for environmental sensitivity, which can be measured with a short questionnaire. Application of the vantage sensitivity framework to psychiatry and clinical psychology may improve our knowledge regarding when, how, and for whom interventions work.
Highlights
Extensive empirical evidence demonstrates that psychological intervention is an effective way to treat mental health problems [1–6]
There has been pronounced scrutiny of whether the effectiveness of interventions depends upon inherent characteristics of the individual, such as genes and personality traits. Recent psychological theories, such as vantage sensitivity, suggest that people may vary in how sensitive they are to supportive environmental influences and that this sensitivity affects their likelihood to experience the beneficial effects of psychological therapy
We provide an up-to-date review of a selection of recent studies providing empirical evidence that genetic, physiological and psychological markers of sensitivity moderate the positive effects of psychological intervention
Summary
Extensive empirical evidence demonstrates that psychological intervention is an effective way to treat mental health problems [1–6]. Vantage sensitivity [43, 44] is a relatively new concept referring to the proclivity of some people to benefit disproportionately from positive features of environmental experience, just as vulnerability depicts a propensity to succumb to the negative effects of adversity in the diathesis–stress framework Vantage sensitive individuals, those more responsive to and positively influenced by features of the environment that promote well-being, are presumed to possess inherent genetic, physiological and psychological traits that subserve responsivity to positive experience. Children with the long variant of the 5-HTTLPR had similar rates of secure attachment whether they were in the treatment or control group (71 and 70%, respectively) These findings suggest that the short variant of the 5-HTTLPR predicted the positive response to psychological intervention, providing evidence for vantage sensitivity as a function of 5-HTTLPR. Three years after the completion of the program, improvements in body mass index were found only among females with high trait anxiety, suggesting that trait anxiety may reflect a degree of vantage sensitivity [72]
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