Efficacy of cognitive behaviour therapy along with pharmacotherapy in depression

Page: 383-385

Priyanka and Rajbir Singh (Department of Psychology, Maharishi Dayanand University, Rohtak, Haryana)

In the recent world of competition, depression is a major psychiatric illness that effects the children, adults as well as elderly people. The core feature of depression is negative thoughts which in turn give the feelings of helplessness, hopelessness and worthlessness. And these feelings associated with suicidal ideations, in the severe phase depression is the leading cause of suicide. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) is an old psychological treatment for depression that dealt with negative automatic thoughts and the schemas of the patient to reduce the depression and to prevent relapse. Antidepressants also use to treat the depression, they also have the promising results. The present study is an attempt to compare the CBT along with pharmacotherapy and pharmacotherapy alone to treat the depression. For the purpose 30 patients with moderate depression were registered, severity level was assessed by using Beck Depression Inventory-II and then they randomly divided in to two groups, one group received CBT along with psychotherapy and the other group received only pharmacotherapy. Data was analysed by using t-test. The results showed that the CBT along with psychotherapy is more effective to treat depression than pharmacotherapy alone.