Treatments for Depression

According to the World Health Organization (WHO, n.d.), there are more than 264 million people nationwide that are experiencing the common mental disorder called depression. In psychological field, the term is known as the Major Depressive Disorder or MDD.

As the number of people affected by this disorder increases, various treatments were considered. This study included the four common therapies with their corresponding studies in treating the depressive disorder which are: Effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for child and adolescent anxiety disorders across different CBT modalities and comparisons: a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (Sigurvinsdóttir, A. L et al., 2020), Efficacy of interpersonal psychotherapy for depressed adolescents (Mufson, L. et al.,1999),  Effectiveness of Brief Psychodynamic Therapy with Children and Adolescents: an Outcome Study (Gatta, M. et al., 2019), and  Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Young People and Their Careers: a Mixed-Method Feasibility Study (Racey, D. et al., 2018). Through these studies, the efficacy of various treatments for Major Depressive Disorder will be discussed. They will be subjected to variables like age group, trials/intervention, and efficacy in order to compare their advantages and disadvantages. The most effective treatment will also be studied.

Trials/Intervention

In every treatment, trials are conducted to determine the progress and improvement of the patients. At each stage of cognitive behavioral therapy, at least nine sessions provided by trained therapists under regular supervision, a description of the specific treatment was required (Sigurvinsdóttir et al., 2020). For the Interpersonal therapy, a 12-week clinical trial was conducted to patients who met the criteria for DSM-III-R major depressive disorder (Mufson et al., 1999). Another treatment called psychodynamic therapy is used for handling MDD. For the diagnostic assessment, two types of intervention were given: children and adolescents allocated to Group 1 (N = 26) were offered individual psychodynamic psychotherapy alone, whilst youths in Group 2 (N = 31) were offered individual psychotherapy, accompanied by parental support (Gatta et al., 2019). Lastly, an article discussed the intervention made by mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) (Racey et.al (2018). The design was a mixed-method service evaluation of an eight-session MBCT program for adolescents who were recovering from depression. The course was a manualized eight-session group intervention.

From the articles previously mentioned, therapies have their own distinct advantages. Cognitive behavioral therapy can be done individually or by group (Sigurvinsdóttir et al., 2020). In IPT, A “blind” evaluator who assess the symptoms, social problem-solving skills and functioning of the patients (Mufson, et al., 1999). In psychodynamic therapy, the awareness of unconscious mechanisms was improved and to enhance their capacity to fight anxieties and depression (Gatta et al., 2019). For MBCT, parents are included in the treatment session. They were given support in coping up with their children’s disorder. The longest treatment given to patient is the psychodynamic therapy, with an average of 20-40 sessions. It was followed by interpersonal therapy.

The disadvantages of these therapies are as follows: for CBT, even though the session can be made into groups, it does not address wider problems about families that often have importance to the patient’s well-being. For IPT, the interaction between the evaluator and patient is important. If the patient isn’t honest and willing to be cured, then the treatment won’t work. For PDT, since unconscious mechanisms are improved, which relies on the unconscious mind, this treatment trusts on theoretical constructs that are hard to prove. For MBCT, this treatment requires maintenance for every session to produce best results.

Age Group

Depression is a serious mental problem that can happen to any ages and generations. In here, all therapies focused on treating adolescents. The CBT study included adolescents who have primary diagnosis of depression aged 18 years old and below (Sigurvinsdóttir et al., 2020). The IPT study involved 48 clinic-referred kids aged 12 to 18 years old (Mufson et al., 1999). Meanwhile, PDT consisted of 57 young people around 6 to 18 years old and was accompanied by their parents (Gatta et al., 2019). Lastly, the MBTC study recruited children from 14 to 18 years old who are having acute episode of depression (Racey et al., 2018). It is observed that all of their studies showed positive reactions to the treatment of depression. It appeared that all of the therapies are effective in improving the mood, problem-solving, and social skills of the adolescents. It is also significant that the issues are addressed in their early age instead when they entered the adulthood. This will prevent the suicidal attempts of mentally-challenged teenagers. However, it is showed among the studies that cognitive behavior therapy is the most useful therapy for any age group especially in adolescents. It has a successful rate of 50-70% after the intended trials. In contrast, all the therapies found challenges in the age group since they are still children who lacks will to overcome the depression. Due to this, some participants didn’t complete the modules or protocols in every therapy. For instance, 48 out of 57 adolescents agreed to participate in the free treatment of interpersonal therapy but 32 only completed the procedures (Mufson et al., 1999).

Efficacy of the treatments

It is important to know the efficacy or effectiveness of every treatment so that the patients will feel more confident and safer in taking them. All the studies showed the efficacy of all four therapies in minimizing depressive symptoms and improving the mental health of the patients. The adolescents showed a noticeable decrease in hostile behavior and became more socially active. Each treatment has different sessions in curing the patients. CBT composed of at least nine sessions (Sigurvinsdóttir et al., 2020), IPT with 13 sessions (Mufson et al., 1999), PDT with 20-40 sessions (Gatta et al., 2019), and MBTC with 8 sessions (Racey et al., 2018). The patient’s improvement showed in 12 weeks using IPT while adolescents improved after 12 months using PDT.  From these results, it is showed that PDT has the longest time and CBT with the shortest duration. Because of this, cognitive behavioral therapy became the first-in-line suggestion for people with depressive disorder. However, all of the related researches lacked more studies. A more enhanced cognitive behavioral therapy would be more effective if the sessions are increased to 15 (Sigurvinsdóttir et al., 2020). The same goes for the study of psychodynamic therapy (Gatta et al., 2019). More sample is needed for IPT study since they only have 24 patients (Mufson et al., 1999). Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy studies lacked comprehensive data regarding the background of the patients (Racey et al., 2018). Nevertheless, all of the therapies succeeded in giving effective results even with limited data. What more if there are sufficient information and researches in the future.

Various therapies are used for treating the Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Most common among them are Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), Interpersonal Therapy (IPT), Psychodynamic Therapy (PDT) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). These therapies are discussed according to how they are conducted, the age group which these treatments are commonly done, and the efficacy of the treatments. PDT was identified as the treatment with longest session. Patients diagnosed with MDD are mostly adolescents. All treatments showed improvements on the patients’ condition. And the most efficient is the CBT because it has the shortest duration of session among the four.