Psychological interventions to prevent the onset of depressive disorders: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials
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PURPOSE: Depressive disorders are common and have a considerable impact on patients and societies. Several treatments are available, but their effects are modest and reduce the burden only to a limited extent. Preventing the onset of depressive disorders may be one option to further reduce the global disease burden. METHODS: We conducted a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials in participants without a diagnosis of depression at baseline, who were assigned to a preventive psychological intervention, or a care-as-usual, or comparable control group and in which incident cases of depression at follow-up were ascertained with a diagnostic interview. RESULTS: Our systematic searches resulted in 50 trials (14,665 participants) with relatively high quality, in high risk groups of all ages. The psychological interventions were mostly based on cognitive behavioral interventions. One year after the preventive interventions, the relative risk of developing a depressive disorder was RR = 0.81 (95% CI: 0.72-0.91), indicating that those who had received the intervention had 19% less chance to develop a depressive disorder. Given the average control event rate of 30%, twenty-one people had to participate in the intervention to prevent one depressive disorder compared to people in the control conditions. CONCLUSIONS: Prevention is a promising approach to reduce the global disease burden of depression in addition to treatments.
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Indicated prevention approaches have shown potential to reduce subclinical symptoms or prevent onset of a mental disorder in help-seeking and community samples.
“Indicated prevention approaches have shown the potential to reduce subclinical symptoms or even prevent the onset of a mental disorder in help-seeking and community samples [28–31]”
From Efficacy of a transdiagnostic Internet prevention approach in adolescents (EMPATIA study): study protocol of a randomized controlled trial (2024) · cites this paper as [28]
Psychological interventions for the prevention of major depression effectively reduce depression symptoms and avoid or at least delay major depression onset in people with known risk factors or subthreshold symptoms.
“Psychological interventions for the prevention of MDD have been shown to effectively reduce depression symptoms (Cuijpers et al., 2014) and avoid or at least delay MDD onset (Cuijpers et al., 2021; van Zoonen et al., 2014) in people with known risk factors (selective prevention) or with subthreshold symptoms (indicated prevention).”
There are conflicting results on changes in help seeking recommendations and intentions from universal school-based programs.
“Once more, however, there are conflicting results on changes in help seeking recommendations and intentions. 376,381,382”
From Time for united action on depression: a Lancet–World Psychiatric Association Commission (2022) · cites this paper as [381]
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- Authors
- Cuijpers, P., Pineda, B. S., Quero, S., Karyotaki, E., Struijs, S. Y., Figueroa, C. A., Llamas, J. A., Furukawa, T. A., & Muñoz, R. F.
- Affiliations
- Amsterdam Public Health (NL)
- Palo Alto University (US)
- Universitat Jaume I (ES)
- Harvard University (US)
- Leiden University (NL)
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
- Kyoto University (JP)
- Corresponding author
- Cuijpers, Pim
- ORCID
- Venue
- Clinical Psychology Review
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2021-02
- Volume
- 83
- Pages
- 101955
- ISSN
- 0272-7358 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3109375959
- Semantic Scholar
- 4892811095f93e382f3757230a5dfd7326e0d85c
- Cited by
- 148
- References
- 38
- Citations by year
- 2026: 20 · 2025: 24 · 2024: 30 · 2023: 44 · 2022: 19 · 2021: 11
- FWCI
- 2.70
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- erratum (2021-08-01)
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Clinical Psychology Review (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Pure Amsterdam UMC (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Repositori UJI (Universitat Jaume I) (publishedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- VU Research Portal (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISC III CB06 03/0052)
- Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red-Fisiopatología de la Obesidad y Nutrición (ISC III CB06 03/0052)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Mental Health Treatment and Access
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Digital Mental Health Interventions
- Keywords
- depression prevention, depressive disorders, cognitive-behavioral intervention, incident depression, relative risk, disease burden
- MeSH terms
- Psychosocial Intervention, Depressive Disorder, Humans, Psychotherapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic
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