Talk It Out
New research has shown that cognitive therapy, which teaches people to understand and change harmful thoughts, works as well as changing people’s body chemistry with pills.A recent study by psychology professor Robert DeRubeis and a colleague at Vanderbilt challenges American Psychiatric Association guidelines that tout medications as the best treatment for depressed patients. Published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, the study is the largest yet to determine the relative merits of the two approaches. The experiment divided 240 depressed patients into three groups, treating one with antidepressants and another with cognitive therapy. The third group was given a placebo. After 16 weeks,the results for those receiving talk therapy and those on drugs were statistically identical. The researchers also found that subjects who were given drugs were more likely to relapse into depression, suggesting that cognitive therapy continued working after treatment ended. “We believe that cognitive therapy might have more lasting effects because it equips patients with the tools they need to manage their problems and emotions,” says DeRubeis, who is also associate dean for the social sciences in SAS.