Verke Editorial

Research behind Verke

Verke coaches are being evaluated in an ongoing randomized controlled trial at Stockholm University.

This page is a transparent look at the research behind Verke — the academic study the product is being evaluated in, the peer-reviewed literature behind each coaching method, and the specific things we do and don't claim. Where the research is strong we say so; where it's developing we hedge; where outcomes haven't been published yet we stay quiet until they are.

Two of our coaches are in an ongoing randomized controlled trial at Stockholm University, supervised by a leading internet-interventions researcher; the six coaching methods Verke uses each have their own independent peer-reviewed evidence base; and we will publish trial outcomes on this page when the peer-reviewed results are public.

Two of Verke's coaches — Anna (psychodynamic) and Judith (cognitive-behavioral) — are being evaluated in a three-arm randomized controlled trial at Stockholm University. Ninety adults with social anxiety disorder were randomized to AI-delivered psychodynamic coaching with Anna, AI-delivered cognitive-behavioral coaching with Judith, or a waitlist control group. The active intervention runs for four weeks, with the main symptom measures taken at the end of the intervention and again at a one-month follow-up.

The main endpoint is social anxiety symptom reduction measured with validated questionnaires. Secondary measures include depression symptoms, general anxiety, therapeutic alliance, and participant satisfaction.

The project runs from March 2025 through December 2027 and is ongoing; it is supervised by Professor Per Carlbring at Stockholm University's Department of Psychology. The full project page is on the Stockholm University research catalogue: Stockholm University research catalogue, and the supervising researcher's site is carlbring.se.

Alongside the primary-outcome measures, participants completed weekly qualitative surveys about their experience with the coaches. Aggregated across the active study arms, roughly 70% of respondents expressed gratitude, surprise at the coach's effectiveness, or a willingness to continue after the study window ended. These are subjective survey reports, not clinical endpoints; we report them as qualitative engagement signals, not as efficacy claims.

Professor Per Carlbring is Professor of Clinical Psychology at Stockholm University and a pioneer of internet-delivered psychotherapy research. He is Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal Internet Interventions, which he co-founded in 2014, and his research group has produced foundational randomized trials on internet-delivered CBT and psychodynamic therapy for anxiety disorders. Carlbring supervises the Stockholm University study. Stockholm University profile · Google Scholar.

The two coaches referenced in the Hassbrink thesis — "Anna" and "Judith" — are the same two AI profiles you see in Verke today. During the study's runtime, the psychodynamic coach was displayed under the name "Samuel" and the cognitive-behavioral coach under the name "Simon". The Hassbrink thesis and all forthcoming peer-reviewed reporting use "Anna" and "Judith", so we've aligned the product display names to match. The coach prompts, methods, and configurations have been the same throughout — only the display names changed.

Each of the six coaching methods below has its own independent peer-reviewed evidence base, separate from the ongoing Stockholm University study. These are the methods our coaches are trained on. The method-specific pages go deeper into how each one works inside Verke; the summaries here are just the evidence anchor.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

CBT is among the most researched psychological approaches for common mental-health concerns. Network meta-analyses identify individual CBT as one of the most effective psychological interventions for social anxiety disorder (Mayo-Wilson et al., 2014). Read more about CBT at Verke →

Psychodynamic Therapy (PDT)

PDT has been shown to be efficacious for social anxiety in head-to-head randomized trials against CBT, with both approaches showing durable benefit at long-term follow-up (Leichsenring et al., 2013). A 2023 umbrella review concluded PDT now meets contemporary criteria as an empirically-supported approach for depression, anxiety, and somatic symptom disorders (Leichsenring et al., 2023). Read more about PDT at Verke →

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

A meta-analysis of 39 randomized trials found ACT superior to waitlist, psychological placebo, and usual care across anxiety, depression, substance use, and chronic pain (A-Tjak et al., 2015). Read more about ACT at Verke →

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)

EFT is an American Psychological Association-designated empirically supported approach for relationship distress, with meta-analyses reporting large benefits for couple distress across randomized trials (Wiebe & Johnson, 2016). Read more about EFT at Verke →

Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT)

CFT has a growing evidence base, with meta-analyses reporting small-to-moderate effects on depression, anxiety, self-criticism, and self-compassion in clinical samples (Vidal & Soldevilla, 2023). The evidence base is smaller than for CBT or PDT and is still developing. Read more about CFT at Verke →

Nonviolent Communication (NVC)

NVC is a structured communication practice — observe, feel, need, request — rather than a clinical intervention, and the peer-reviewed evidence base is smaller and more methodologically mixed than the other methods on this list. Scoping reviews suggest positive effects on empathy, workplace conflict, and interpersonal communication (Museux et al., 2022). Read more about NVC at Verke →

Verke's coaching methodology is informed by the clinical-psychology literature and refined against real user feedback at scale. The Stockholm University randomized trial is supervised by Professor Per Carlbring; the accompanying Hassbrink master's thesis (Stockholm University, 2025) investigates between-arm symptom differences at the end of the intervention and one-month follow-up. The thesis is listed on Carlbring's publications page but has not yet been deposited in a public repository.

Verke's psychodynamic method draws on peer-reviewed work from Carlbring's research network at Stockholm University — including the 2017 internet-delivered affect-focused PDT trial by Johansson and colleagues (Johansson et al., 2017) and the 2024 guided-vs-unguided internet-delivered PDT trial by Lindegaard and colleagues (Lindegaard et al., 2024). Together, that body of work has established internet-delivered psychodynamic therapy as an evidence-supported approach for social anxiety. We cite this network as independent peer-reviewed support for the method Anna uses; its authors are not Verke team members or endorsers.

What we claim

• Verke delivers coaching using methods with substantial peer-reviewed evidence bases — CBT, PDT, ACT, EFT, CFT — and the structured communication practice of NVC.
• The Anna and Judith coaches in the Verke product are the same two AI profiles being evaluated in the Stockholm University study.
• The Stockholm University randomized controlled trial is ongoing; its design, timeline, and supervising researcher are public information.
• Many participants in the weekly qualitative surveys during the study reported positive subjective experiences with the coaches — roughly 70% expressed gratitude, surprise at effectiveness, or willingness to continue.

What we don't claim

• Verke is not a replacement for professional mental-health care, psychiatric evaluation, or crisis support. It is a coaching product.
• The Stockholm University RCT has published primary-outcome results. It has not — those results are expected when the Hassbrink thesis and any subsequent peer-reviewed manuscript become public.
• Verke is an FDA-cleared medical device. It is not, and we make no medical-device claims.
• Specific clinical outcome numbers — symptom-reduction percentages, recovery figures, or any other quantitative claim — for Verke's own coaches. Those numbers will live on this page once they are peer-reviewed and public.
• Any clinical-assessment capability. Verke's coaches do not screen for, label, or evaluate clinical conditions.

If you're a clinician, researcher, or journalist looking into Verke's methodology or the Stockholm study, the public documents we know of are the Stockholm University research-catalogue entry and Professor Carlbring's publication list. The Anna/Judith thesis is listed on Carlbring's site but had not been deposited in a public repository as of this page's most recent update.

For collaboration, methodology questions, or a deeper conversation about Verke's coaching design, write to us at support@verke.co. Response time is typically a few working days.