Posted by Elizabeth on October 9, 1999, at 4:07:04
In reply to This must be hard to watch..., posted by Sara Ann on October 9, 1999, at 0:24:13
> I did a lot of reading about treatment efficacy when I was suffering from mild to moderate depression. If the depression is mild to moderate, there is a mega study that showed both interpersonal therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy to be as effective as medication.
I believe I know which study you mean. It also found all treatments equal to placebo in mild-to-moderate major depression. Oops. (In severe depression, it was medication > IPT > CBT > placebo.)
>If she is having psychoanalytic psychotherapy, it's time to run from that, psychoanalytic psychotherapy has not been proven effective for any psychiatric illness.
It hasn't been tested in the same way as CBT and IPT have (IPT is really a specific form of psychoanalytic therapy, though). It's probably better for some people. I know that *I* didn't get anything out of CBT -- it seemed insultingly simplistic and impersonal, even though the therapist was someone who I liked and got along with. Now I see a psychoanalyst (*not* five times a week, however!) and am finding it helpful.
I'm generally skeptical of systematic studies of talk therapies -- they deviate too much from the way such therapies are actually done. The success of talk therapy (I count CBT as a talk therapy, though some people don't) hinges as much as anything else on the relationship between the therapist and client.
But anyway, I think "it's time to run" from any therapist of any orientation who tries to convince you that you shouldn't be taking medication without giving a convincing reason. It took me many tries to find medication that worked, but now I'm doing pretty well. Tell your daughter that, Lori. (I'm 23 now and have been struggling with depression since I was 14.) You said she had mostly tried SSRIs...maybe she needs to try a different class of medication. (SSRIs do not work very well for me, either.) What else has she tried? Older drugs? Newer drugs? Augmentation?
> There's another issue here, that you don't say that your daughter is asking for your help. I think that offering advice in those circumstances could hurt your relationship with her. If she is depressed she needs all the support she can get. Maybe the best thing to do is listen and offer to help her explore other treatment modalities if this one doesn't work for her.
This is a great point...advice is good, but sometimes a hug is better.
poster:Elizabeth
thread:12619
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19991016/msgs/12879.html