Effectiveness of Supplementary Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) over Pharmacotherapy for managing Depression

Research in Health 1
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Table of Contents
1. Study Title...................................................................................................................................3
2. Introduction..................................................................................................................................3
3. Background..................................................................................................................................3
4. Study Aim....................................................................................................................................5
5. Proposed Methods.......................................................................................................................5
Design..........................................................................................................................................5
Population of interest...................................................................................................................6
Sample and sampling approach....................................................................................................6
Intervention (if applicable)...........................................................................................................7
Data collection approach..............................................................................................................7
Data management and analyses...................................................................................................8
6. Ethical Considerations.................................................................................................................9
7. Timeline.....................................................................................................................................10
8.Feasibility / Resources................................................................................................................11
9. Reflection...................................................................................................................................13
10. References................................................................................................................................14
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1. Study Title
The Title of this Research Study is "Effectiveness of Supplementary Cognitive-Behavioral
Therapy (CBT) over Pharmacotherapy for managing Depression".
2. Introduction
Depression refers to a mental ill-health experienced by an individual, that brings a persistent
feeling of worthlessness and despair, making that individual to lose joy from his/her daily life. It
is one of the serious disorder that interrupts the normal activities of a person, causes pain and
ultimately leads to suicide in many cases. Though being one of the most severe cases, depression
is a highly curable disorder. It all depends on how early it is diagnosed and treated. According to
the World Health Organization, untreated depression causes of over 700,000 suicides across the
world every year (Hofmann, and Otto, 2017). The earlier that treatment is started, the more
successful it is in preventing the recurrence of depressive disorder. The previous researches on
psychoanalysis for depressive disorder have come up with a number of therapies for managing
the problem of depression, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Psychodynamic Therapy, and
pharmacotherapy. In this context, this research study aims to examine the effectiveness of
Supplementary Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) over Pharmacotherapy for managing
Depression in patients.
3. Background
In the recent years, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) has become an effective treatment for
the patients whose depression has failed to respond towards anti-depressants. CBT works by
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making clients to learn a series of behavioral and cognitive skills that they can apply on their
own. However, the long-term results of using CBT are not known yet. In a constant follow-up
process of the CoBalt Trial, the cost-effectiveness and clinical behavioral therapy has been
investigated as an addition to the patients' normal care routine (Seki et al., 2016). It involved
medication for 4-6 years in primary care clients suffering with treatment-resistant depression.
An adequate amount of evidences have also been found regarding the use of combined treatment
for dealing with the issues of major depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and panic
disorder. The outcomes of the combined treatment were observed twofold as large as those of
pharmacotherapy, thus emphasizing upon the experimental advantage of combined treatment. In
addition to this, in many circumstances from mild to severe depression, CBT has also been
applied successfully as standalone treatment. A range of meta-analysis have been carried out in
the past, about the combination of pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy for the patients, and have
come up with an benefit over the use of either treatment alone (Park et al., 2017). This benefit
was specifically evident mainly in those patients suffering from chronic or extreme recurrent
depression, and hospitalized patients.
From the past clinical researches in the National Institute of Mental Health Treatment of
Depression Collaborative Research Program (TDCRP) , it has been found that pharmacotherapy
was better than cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) in the severe diagnosis of depressed clients.
However, this verdict was neither consistent throughout the sites within the TDCRP nor robust
with the findings of other researches. Moreover, many scholars have argued that those other
researches were innately inconsistent due to exclusion of pill-placebo controls. Although this had
been established that the inclusion of such controls would have enabled flawless interpretation of
findings, it was not established that their non-inclusion made those researches uninterruptable.
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