Psychotherapy Is Crucial for Optimizing Prevention of Future Depressive Episodes

For many patients, major depression is a chronic illness with significant relapse risk, which increases with each new episode, making the prevention of future episodes critically important. Most guidelines emphasize the importance of continued antidepressant treatment, but few discuss the potential role of psychotherapy. In a meta-analysis of 11 randomized, controlled trials in remitted depressed patients, researchers examined the prophylactic efficacy of evidence-based psychotherapy (mostly cognitive-behavioral therapy [CBT] or mindfulness-based CT), as either an alternative or an addition to antidepressant medication (treatment duration, 28–235 weeks; mean, 97 weeks).

In six studies (n=948), psychotherapy without antidepressants (antidepre…