Depression-Focused Psychotherapies: Conclusions

Depression-Focused Psychotherapies: Conclusions

The depression-focused psychotherapies, as exemplified by IPT, several models of behavior therapy, and Beck's CT, are practical and effective outpatient treatments of mild to moderately severe major depressive disorder. From differing vantage points, each therapy assesses the depressed patient's current state and problem areas, provides psychoeducation, explicitly instills hope, and guides the selection of model-specific strategies to help patients "work out" of the depressive episode. No one form of psychotherapy has emerged as superior to the others; interest, aptitude, and opportunities for supervised training may have more to do with a therapist's choice of a model than empirical evidence. It remains to be seen if an eclectic model of psychotherapy for depression will emerge, one that fuses the more clinically germane aspects of IPT, behavior therapy, and CT (e.g., Karasu 1990). Caution should be exercised before automatically adopting such integrated therapies, however, because several studies have established that combinations of various behavioral, marital, and cognitive strategies are not more effective than single models of treatment (N. S. Jacobson et al. 1991, 1996; Rehm et al. 1987; Rude 1986).

The depression-focused psychotherapies probably do best alone, without concomitant pharmacotherapy, for more acutely depressed patients with higher levels of premorbid functioning and adequate social support (e.g., Klerman and Weissman 1982; Safran et al. 1993; Teri and Lewinsohn 1986). This indication should not be trivialized as a nonspecific response, because these psychotherapies have been consistently shown to be superior to waiting-list or low-contact control conditions.

Depression-Focused Psychotherapies Introduction Historical Overview Shared Features of Depression-Focused Psychotherapies Interpersonal Psychotherapy Behavior Therapy Cognitive Therapy Treatment Efficacy

• Interpersonal Psychotherapy
• Behavior Therapy
• Cognitive Therapy