Evidence-Based Reviews

CBT for depression: What the evidence says

Current Psychiatry. 2018 September;17(9):14-16,20-23

Suma P. Chand, PhD

Chaitanya Ravi, MD

Binu Chakkamparambil, MD

Arun Prasad, MD

Ankita Vora, MD

Cognitive-behavioral therapy can play an important role in both acute and long-term treatment.

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References

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2. Keller MB. Past, present, and future directions for defining optimal treatment outcome in depression: remission and beyond. JAMA. 2003;289(23):3152-3160.
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6. Fournier JC, DeRubeis RJ, Hollon SD, et al. Antidepressant drug effects and depression severity: a patient-level meta-analysis. JAMA. 2010;303(1):47-53.
7. Paykel ES, Hollyman JA, Freeling P, et al. Predictors of therapeutic benefit from amitriptyline in mild depression: a general practice placebo-controlled trial. J Affect Disord. 1988;14(1):83-95
8. Marcus SC, Olfson M. National trends in the treatment for depression from 1998 to 2007. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2010;67(12):1265-1273.
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11. Matsunaga M, Okamoto Y, Suzuki S et.al. Psychosocial functioning in patients with treatment-resistant depression after group cognitive behavioral therapy. BMC Psychiatry. 2010;10:22.
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Major depressive disorder (MDD) has a devastating impact on individuals and society because of its high prevalence, its recurrent nature, its frequent comorbidity with other disorders, and the functional impairment it causes. Compared with other chronic diseases, such as arthritis, asthma, and diabetes, MDD produces the greatest decrement in health worldwide.¹ The goals in treating MDD should be not just to reduce symptom severity but also to achieve continuing remission and lower the risk for relapse.²

Antidepressants are the most common treatment for depression.³ Among psychotherapies used to treat MDD, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) has been identified as an effective treatment.⁴ Collaborative care models have been reported to manage MDD more effectively.⁵ In this article, we review the evidence supporting the use of CBT as monotherapy and in combination with antidepressants for acute and long-term treatment of MDD.

Acute treatment: Not too soon for CBT

Mild to moderate depression

Research has indicated that for the treatment of mild MDD, antidepressants are unlikely to be more effective than placebo.^6,7 Studies also have reported that response to antidepressants begins to outpace response to placebo only when symptoms are no longer mild. Using antidepressants for patients with mild depression could therefore place them at risk of overtreatment.⁸ In keeping with these findings, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) has recommended the use of evidence-based psychotherapies, such as CBT, as an initial treatment choice for patients with mild to moderate MDD.⁹

Two recent studies have suggested that the combination of CBT plus antidepressants could boost improvement in psychosocial functioning for patients with mild MDD.^10,11 However, neither study included a group of patients who received only CBT to evaluate if CBT alone could have also produced similar effects. Other limitations include the lack of a control group in one study and small sample sizes in both studies. However, both studies had a long follow-up period and specifically studied the impact on psychosocial functioning.

Moderate to severe depression

Earlier depression treatment guidelines suggested that antidepressants should be used to treat more severe depression, while psychotherapy should be used mainly for mild depression.¹²This recommendation was influenced by the well-known National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Treatment of Depression Collaborative Research Program, a multicenter randomized controlled trial (RCT) that used a placebo control.¹³ In this study, CBT was compared with antidepressants and found to be no more effective than placebo for more severely depressed patients.¹³However, this finding was not consistent across the 3 sites where the study was conducted; at the site where CBT was provided by more experienced CBT therapists, patients with more severe depression who received CBT fared as well as patients treated with antidepressants.¹⁴ A later double-blind RCT that used experienced therapists found that CBT was as effective as antidepressants (monoamine oxidase inhibitors), and both treatments were superior to placebo in reducing symptoms of atypical depression.¹⁵

Another placebo-controlled RCT conducted at 2 sites found that CBT was as effective as antidepressants in the treatment of moderately to severely depressed patients. As in the NIMH Treatment of Depression Collaborative Research Program trial,¹³ in this study, there were indications that the results were dependent on therapist experience.¹⁶ These findings suggest that the experience of the therapist is an important factor.

A recent meta-analysis of treatments of the acute phase of MDD compared 11 RCTs of CBT and second-generation antidepressants (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, and other medications with related mechanisms of action).¹⁷ It found that as a first-step treatment, CBT and antidepressants had a similar impact on symptom relief in patients with moderate to severe depression. Patients treated with antidepressants also had a higher risk of experiencing adverse events or discontinuing treatment because of adverse events. However, this meta-analysis included trials that had methodological shortcomings, which reduces the strength of these conclusions.

Continue to: Patients with MDD and comorbid personality disorders have been...

References

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CBT for depression: What the evidence says

References

Acute treatment: Not too soon for CBT

Mild to moderate depression

Moderate to severe depression

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