Abnormal psychology (176-180)

How effective is cognitive therapy in treating depression?

Studies have shown that cognitive therapies help patients suffering from depression but it is

not superior to any other treatments. In 1989, a study carried out by Elkin tested 280 people

with major depression. He found that there is no significant difference between the treatment

with cognitive therapy, drugs and placebo.

The critics of this type of therapy include:

The high costs

Focus on the symptoms rather than the causes

Less manipulative compared to other methods

Group approaches to the treatment of depression

In the treatement of depression, most group therapy is actually couple therapies since

depression is lionked to marital problems. These therapies focus on teaching couples to

communicate and problem-solve more effectively.

The beneficial effects that a therapy group can have on an individual have long been

recognised but until recently there was a lack of high-quality studies comparing the

effectiveness of individual and group therapy for pateints with similar characteristics.

Important factors to consider when evaluating the cogntitive therapy:

Group cohesion

Exclusion

Confidentiality

Relationship with therapist

Biomedical, individual and group approaches to the treatment of PTSD

Antidepressant and tranquilizers are presecribed to traet people suffering from PTSd because

the improvemeny in depression contributes in the improvement of PTSD.

Foa, an expert on PTSD, encourages her patients to talk about the trauma to deal with it and

cope with it. She argues that people suffering from chronic PTSD constatntly yry to avoid

situations that remind othem about the trauma. Her goals are to:

Create a safe environment that shows the trauma cannot hurt them.

Show that remebring the trauma is not equivilant to experiencing it again.

Show that anxiety is alleviated over time.

Experiencing PTSD symptoms doesn’t lead to a loss of control.

At the intial stages of the treatement, the situation of the patients gets worse, gradually they

improve.

Crisis intervention (debreiving) is now a common practise after a traumatic event. However,

this approach is debatable since most people who experience a traumatic event do not develop

a PTSD.

Weine uses another approach wwhen treating patients with PTSD. His method is called

testimonial psychotherapy. It is based on the creation of an oral history archive to collect,

study and disseminate te surviviors’ memories. This provides the patients the time needed to

look back and re-evaluate the situation. All testimonies were conducted in Bosnian and

translated to English. This helps in correcting mistakes concerning the judgement of the

traumatic event. Howver, the translation affects the cross-cultural psychology.

The patients showed a significan decrease in the PTSD symptoms after 6 months.