Study On Depression Boosts Talk Therapy

By John M Grohol PsyD
September 29, 2005

Talk therapy can work as well as antidepressants in severely depressed people and should also be used as a first line of defense, University of Pennsylvania researchers concluded in a study published yesterday.

In a study of 240 patients, researchers found that cognitive therapy, a type of treatment that teaches patients to think more realistically, worked as well as a popular antidepressant for moderate to severe depression.

Patients who got four months of cognitive therapy also had about the same relapse rate a year later as people who took Paxil (paroxetine) the whole time. If people quit taking Paxil after four months, their relapse rate was twice that of therapy patients’.

As a result, the authors from Penn and Vanderbilt University contend, cognitive therapy is cheaper than antidepressants in the long run.

The research adds to a growing body of evidence that this type of therapy, developed in Philadelphia by the University of Pennsylvania’s Aaron Beck, works as well as the drugs.

Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues, and the intersection of technology and psychology since 1992.