Counselling helps prevent depression

Patients of depression who undergo cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) after medications have a lower rate of relapse.CBT involves learning to recognise distorted thoughts that lead to emotional distress. Instead of attacking the emotion, the patient is taught to address the distorted thought that leads to the emotion, which helps in improvement in the emotion. Researchers from the University of Bologna, Italy, found that CBT of residual symptoms yields a significantly lower relapse rate than the usual management in recurrent depression at a 2-year follow-up.

The researchers assessed the outcomes of 40 patients with recurrent depression who were successfully treated with drug therapy and then randomly selected to get standard care or cognitive behaviour therapy for residual symptoms. Subjects in both groups had antidepressant drugs tapered and discontinued. The patients were followed for 6 years; during which time no antidepressant drugs were used unless a relapse occurred.Forty per cent of the patients, who underwent CBT, experienced at least one relapse as compared to the 90 per cent in the usual management group. Patients in the CBT group had significantly fewer depressive episodes during follow-up than those in the usual management group.

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