Steven D Hollon

BACKGROUND: Keeping individuals on antidepressants after remission or recovery of major depressive disorder is a common strategy to prevent relapse or recurrence. Preventive cognitive therapy (PCT) has been proposed as an alternative to maintenance antidepressant treatment, but whether its addition would allow tapering of antidepressants or enhance the efficacy of maintenance antidepressant treatment is unclear. We aimed to compare the effectiveness of antidepressants alone, with PCT ...

BACKGROUND: The leading mental health causes of the global burden of disease are depression in women and alcohol use disorders in men. A major hurdle to the implementation of evidence-based psychological treatments in primary care in developing countries is the non-availability of skilled human resources. The aim of these trials is to evaluate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of two psychological treatments developed for the treatment of depression and alcohol use disorders in ...

IMPORTANCE: Antidepressant medication (ADM) is efficacious in the treatment of depression, but not all patients achieve remission and fewer still achieve recovery with ADM alone.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the effects of combining cognitive therapy (CT) with ADM vs ADM alone on remission and recovery in major depressive disorder (MDD).

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: A total of 452 adult outpatients with chronic or recurrent MDD participated in a trial conducted in research clinics at 3 ...

BACKGROUND: Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and interpersonal therapy (IPT) are among the most well established therapies for the treatment of depression. However, some major questions remain unanswered. First, it is unknown what session frequency results in the most optimal (cost) effectiveness in psychotherapy. Second, the debate as to what mechanisms underlie the effect of psychotherapy has not yet been resolved. Enhancing knowledge about the optimal session frequency and ...

BACKGROUND: Depression is a common, debilitating, and costly disorder. Many patients request psychological therapy, but the best-evidenced therapy-cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)-is complex and costly. A simpler therapy-behavioural activation (BA)-might be as effective and cheaper than is CBT. We aimed to establish the clinical efficacy and cost-effectiveness of BA compared with CBT for adults with depression.

METHODS: In this randomised, controlled, non-inferiority trial, we ...

IMPORTANCE: Current guidelines recommend treating severe depression with pharmacotherapy. Randomized clinical trials as well as traditional meta-analyses have considerable limitations in testing for moderators of treatment outcomes.

OBJECTIVES: To conduct a systematic literature search, collect primary data from trials, and analyze baseline depression severity as a moderator of treatment outcomes between cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and antidepressant medication (ADM).

DATA ...

BACKGROUND: There is conflicting evidence about comorbid personality pathology in depression treatments.

AIMS: To test the effects of antidepressant drugs and cognitive therapy in people with depression distinguished by the presence or absence of personality disorder.

METHOD: Random assignment of 180 out-patients with depression to 16 weeks of antidepressant medication or cognitive therapy. Random assignment of medication responders to continued medication or placebo, and comparison with ...

CONTEXT: Adolescent offspring of depressed parents are at markedly increased risk of developing depressive disorders. Although some smaller targeted prevention trials have found that depression risk can be reduced, these results have yet to be replicated and extended to large-scale, at-risk populations in different settings.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the effects of a group cognitive behavioral (CB) prevention program compared with usual care in preventing the onset of depression.

DESIGN, ...

BACKGROUND: The Healthy Activity Programme (HAP), a brief behavioural intervention delivered by lay counsellors, enhanced remission over 3 months among primary care attendees with depression in peri-urban and rural settings in India. We evaluated the sustainability of the effects after treatment termination, the cost-effectiveness of HAP over 12 months, and the effects of the hypothesized mediator of activation on clinical outcomes.

METHODS AND FINDINGS: Primary care attendees aged 18-65 ...

BACKGROUND: There is substantial evidence that antidepressant medications treat moderate to severe depression effectively, but there is less data on cognitive therapy's effects in this population.

OBJECTIVE: To compare the efficacy in moderate to severe depression of antidepressant medications with cognitive therapy in a placebo-controlled trial.

DESIGN: Random assignment to one of the following: 16 weeks of medications (n = 120), 16 weeks of cognitive therapy (n = 60), or 8 weeks of ...

BACKGROUND: Resilience, or an individual's positive response in managing life's adversities, is of increasing interest in addressing the mental health disparities in refugees. Although the link between stressful life events and poor mental health is established, research on the role of resilience on the mental health of refugees is limited.

AIMS: This study assessed the association between resilience and anxiety or depression in resettled Bhutanese adults in Western ...

Depression is one of the most common and debilitating psychiatric disorders and is a leading cause of suicide. Most people who become depressed will have multiple episodes, and some depressions are chronic. Persons with bipolar disorder will also have manic or hypomanic episodes. Given the recurrent nature of the disorder, it is important not just to treat the acute episode, but also to protect against its return and the onset of subsequent episodes. Several types of interventions have ...

BACKGROUND: Antidepressant medication prevents the return of depressive symptoms, but only as long as treatment is continued.

OBJECTIVES: To determine whether cognitive therapy (CT) has an enduring effect and to compare this effect against the effect produced by continued antidepressant medication.

DESIGN: Patients who responded to CT in a randomized controlled trial were withdrawn from treatment and compared during a 12-month period with medication responders who had been randomly ...