http://www.nature.com/news/depression-a-change-of-mind-1.16325

Depression: A change of mind

Cognitive behavioural therapy is the best-studied form of psychotherapy. But researchers are still struggling to understand why it works.

Emily Anthes
12 November 2014

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Antidepressant drugs are usually the first-line treatment for depression. They are seen as a quick, inexpensive fix — but clinical trials reveal that only 22–40% of patients emerge from depression with drugs alone. Although there are various approaches to psychotherapy, CBT is the most widely studied; a meta-analysis published this year revealed that, depending on how scientists measure outcomes, between 42% and 66% of patients no longer meet the criteria for depression after therapy.

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Research by DeRubeis and his colleagues has revealed that many depressed adults undergoing CBT experienced 'sudden gains', in which their symptoms lessened significantly between two therapeutic sessions. These rapid changes accounted for more than half of the patients' total improvement over the course of treatment.

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Strauman is optimistic about the growing number of collaborations that he is seeing between neuroscientists and clinical psychologists who are willing to tackle the problem. “I think we're finally at the point,” he says, “where the complexity of our thinking is a match for the complexity of the disorder.”

Nature 515, 185–187 (13 November 2014) doi:10.1038/515185a