Comparison of Antidepressants and Therapy
Does cognitive-behavioral therapy work just as well as antidepressants when treating depression? How we perceive our depression is what helps to determine the type of treatment necessary. Antidepressants treat the common symptoms of depression rather than the condition while therapy helps change the thought process so the disease is cured in the end. Many studies are done to provide necessary information to what the answer to this question should be. The following articles provided studies that explained the effects of treatment with medication, with therapy, or a combination of both. Reviews of research on psychotherapy versus antidepressants with evidence supported methods were used. WebPages along with the reading of numerous studies were used in order to identify all possible information. The articles were reviewed as well as surveys and meta-analysis. It was shown that each article I critiqued used only adult patients and the results show that evidence was provided from a substantial number of randomized clinical trials that each provided the same result of cognitive therapy being the cure for depression and antidepressants being quick symptom relief. Antonuccio, Danton, DeNelsky hypothesizes that cognitive behavioral therapy is at least as effective as medication in treatment of depression, even if severe. It reviews a wide range of well-controlled studies comparing psychological and pharmacological treatments for depression. The study split cognitive behavioral therapy into three subtypes and a study was done with each type. The three subtypes of cognitive behavioral therapy were pleasant activity therapy, cognitive therapy, and social skills therapy. Pleasant activity therapy involves helping patients increase their occurrence and quality of pleasant activities. Though there were no studies on this therapy alone. However a study was conducted using 97 patients that were randomly assigned to one of the three psychological therapies combined with