Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry

Objectives：Cognitive therapy is the most extensively researched psychological treatment for nonpsychotic unipolar outpatient depressive disorders. This review focused on the utility of this approach in severe or chronic depressive disorders, in relapse prevention and also on the potential benefits of combining cognitive therapy with medication.

　

Methods：The author reviewed original studies and quantitative analyses on the effects of cognitive therapy, predictors of response, and neuroimaging studies of cognitive therapy in major depressive disorder. The sources used for the literature search were data bases：PubMed, EMBASE, CDSR on the internet, references in papers or books.

　

Results：This review suggests that cognitive therapy is as effective as antidepressant medication in severe depressive disorders. And cognitive therapy can be an effective alternative to antidepressant medication. Patients benefited significantly more from combined cognitive therapy and antidepressant treatment than from either treatment alone. Most importantly, the addition of cognitive therapy to usual treatment appears to protect against future relapse in individuals known to be at high risk of repeated episodes of depression. In addition, subjects who received cognitive therapy showed significantly greater improvements in chronic depression than receiving antidepressant medication. Pooled data suggests that there is a significant relationship between the therapist's level of training or experience, the type of therapy used and patient outcome. Recent functional imaging studies examining brain changes following cognitive therapy report a variety of regional effects, but there is no consistent pattern across the few published studies.

　

Conclusion：Cognitive therapy has proved beneficial in treating depressive patients. Despite empirical data supporting its efficacy, there are still problems in gaining access to cognitive therapy in clinical practice.

Keywords Cognitive therapy;Depressive disorder;Antidepressant.