Is Cbt Effective in Treating Depression

900 Words4 Pages
Discuss the effectiveness of cognitive behavioural therapy as a treatment for depression. In the UK alone, depression affects 8.8% of the population. (Foroushani, P.S., Schneider, J., Assareh, N. 2011) This means that there is a constant requirement for an effective method of treating depression. One favoured method is cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). CBT aims to set goals over a series of therapy sessions in order to encourage positive physical and mental behaviour. To test the effectiveness of cognitive behaviour therapy in common practise, a study was done in Australia wherein 42 GPs used CBT to treat patients with depression (Pierce and Pierce, 2003). Their collective evaluation was that CBT is effective in practise and is useful to increase communication between doctor and patient. However, GPs were concerned that CBT is too time consuming. As time consumption was reported an issue by GPs working in rural areas, applying CBT to large cities may be too expensive as well as time consuming to use regularly when treating depression. Nevertheless, Pierce and Pierce also found that GPs reported CBT to have had a positive affect on their own lives, suggesting that the therapy is equally as effective for the practitioner as as it is for the client. This encourages the idea that CBT is an effective method of treatment, although using it as a treatment for the 8.8% of the UK population is unrealistic due to the cost of administering the therapy. In order to combat the lengthy and expensive process of face-to-face CBT, computerised cognitive behaviour therapy (cCBT) has been recently introduced to treat mild to moderate depression. In a meta-analysis of 12 cCBT reviews from 10 studies on depression from 1999 to 2011, psychologists found that a computerised version of CBT is still psychologically effective as well as cost efficient (Foroushani, et al. 2011).

More about Is Cbt Effective in Treating Depression

Open Document