What is the place of psychological treatments in mood disorders?
Abstract
While psychotherapy has many applications for mood disorders, this paper focuses on those psychotherapies (cognitive behaviour therapy or CBT, and interpersonal psychotherapy or IPT) that have been manualized, extensively evaluated, and positioned as definitive therapies for unipolar depressive disorders. This paper suggests some reasons as to why their role and utility remain unclear. First, despite many randomized controlled efficacy studies, differentiation from other psychotherapies or control interventions appears to occur only when the actual control treatment possesses few therapeutic ingredients. Second, their testing as if they have universal application for non-specific diagnostic entities (e.g. major depression), in trials where there is a high rate of non-specific responsivity to intervention, has limited our capacity to identify the circumstances in which such treatments have specific benefits. Thus, many of the limitations to the knowledge base more reflect limitations reflecting the current evaluation of all antidepressant therapies rather than being unique to the psychotherapies. This paper argues for a change in the paradigms for evaluating the psychotherapies, and argues for a 'horses for courses' approach for conceptualizing the roles of the psychotherapies in managing mood disorders, rather than any model assuming their universal application.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Nonspecific variables pertinent to the treatment context, such as encouragement, empathy, and hopefulness of improvement, can produce powerful treatment effects in their own right.
“Nonspecific variables pertinent to the treatment context, such as encouragement, empathy, and hopefulness of improvement can produce powerful treatment effects in their own right, for a review see [33].”
From Breaking open the black box: isolating the most potent features of a web and mobile phone-based intervention for depression, anxiety, and stress (2015) · cites this paper as [33]
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Proudfoot, J., Parker, G., Manicavasagar, V., Hadzi-Pavlovic, D., Whitton, A., Nicholas, J., Smith, M., & Burckhardt, R. (2012) · Journal of Affective Disorders · doi:10.1016/j.jad.2012.04.007 · Cited by 146 · see citing works
“Non-specific or common therapeutic ingredients in psychological treatments include having a rationale and a structure to the intervention, the expectancy by participants that they will improve and the empathy or support that therapists provide (Parker, 2007).”
BackgroundSelf-citationMendes, D. D., Mello, M. F., Ventura, P. R., Passarela, C. D. M., & Mari, J. D. J. (2008) · The International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine · doi:10.2190/pm.38.3.b · Cited by 138 · see citing works
“In addition, nonspecific factors shared by different psychotherapies may affect outcome [61].”
BackgroundWhitton, A. E., Proudfoot, J., Clarke, J., Birch, M.-R., Parker, G., Manicavasagar, V., & Hadzi-Pavlovic, D. (2015) · JMIR Mental Health · doi:10.2196/mental.3573 · Cited by 69 · see citing works
“Nonspecific variables pertinent to the treatment context, such as encouragement, empathy, and hopefulness of improvement can produce powerful treatment effects in their own right, for a review see [33].”
BackgroundSelf-citationFernández‐Rodríguez, R., Zhao, L., Bizzozero‐Peroni, B., Martínez‐Vizcaíno, V., Mesas, A. E., Wittert, G., & Heilbronn, L. K. (2023) · Telemedicine Journal and e-Health · doi:10.1089/tmj.2023.0374 · Cited by 18 · see citing works
“87,88 Therefore, e-health may play a role in sustainable behavior changes over time by increasing engagement and motivation and the capability of self-monitoring.”
You’ve Got to Believe: Core Beliefs that Underlie Effective Psychotherapy
Overholser, J. C., Braden, A. L., & Fisher, L. B. (2010) · Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy · doi:10.1007/s10879-010-9151-3 · Cited by 13 · see citing works
“Ideally, the treatment is aimed to confront and change some of the client’s underlying etiological forces, which are likely to differ across clients (Parker 2007).”
The development and tendency of depression researches: Viewed from the microbiota-gut-brain axis
Liang, S., Wu, X., Xu, H., Niu, Y., & Jin, F. (2018) · Chinese Science Bulletin (Chinese Version) · doi:10.1360/n972017-01182 · Cited by 8 · see citing works
Hagen, B. F., Wong‐Wylie, G., & Pijl, E. M. (2010) · Journal of Mental Health Counseling · doi:10.17744/mehc.32.2.al84578m4137768k · Cited by 7 · see citing works
“…inherent in the scoring protocol (which merely adds up all the responses to the 17 HAM-D items), which gives relatively benign items like "insomnia" equal importance with more clinically significant items like "suicidal impulses" (Healy, 1997; Parker, 2006; Parker, Anderson, & Haddad, 2003).”
BackgroundInfluentialClinical and Pharmacologic Perspectives on the Treatment of Major Depressive Disorder
Jefferson, J. W. (2011) · CNS Spectrums · doi:10.1017/s1092852912000375 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
Alexander, J. L., Richardson, G., Grypma, L., & Hunkeler, E. M. (2007) · Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics · doi:10.1586/14737175.7.11s.s59 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
“The reader is referred to four recent reviews by Peet and Stokes (2006), Parker and Gibson (2006), Sontrop and Campbell (2006) and Freeman et al.”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialSuffering, Meaning and Hope: Shifting the Focus from Depression in Primary Care
Dowrick, C. F. (2015) · History, philosophy and theory of the life sciences · doi:10.1007/978-94-017-7423-9_9 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
Mental health classification in primary care
Dowrick, C. F., Klinkman, M. S., & Fortes, R. (2013) · Diversity & Equality in Health and Care · Cited by 3 · see citing works
Paykel, E. S. (2006) · The International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology · doi:10.1017/s1461145706006894
- Authors
- Parker, G.
- Affiliations
- Black Dog Institute (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Parker, Gordon
- ORCID
- Parker, Gordon
- Venue
- The International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2006-06-20
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 01
- Pages
- 137
- ISSN
- 1461-1457 (ISSN-L)
- 1469-5111
- OpenAlex
- W1983211773
- Cited by
- 12
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2023: 1 · 2018: 1 · 2015: 2 · 2013: 1 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 1.11
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Health and Medical Research Council
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Pharmacology › Treatment of Major Depression
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Keywords
- mood disorders, major depressive disorder, cognitive behavioral therapy, interpersonal psychotherapy, psychotherapy efficacy, treatment selection
- MeSH terms
- Antidepressive Agents, Combined Modality Therapy, Depressive Disorder, Humans, Interpersonal Relations, Psychotherapy, Group, Research Design, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic, Treatment Outcome, Mood Disorders
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
