Cognitive therapy vs. medications for depression: Treatment outcomes and neural mechanisms

By Robert J. DeRubeis, Greg J. Siegle, S. Hollon. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2008

631 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Depression is one of the most prevalent and debilitating of the psychiatric disorders. Studies have shown that cognitive therapy is as efficacious as antidepressant medication at treating depression, and it seems to reduce the risk of relapse even after its discontinuation. Cognitive therapy and antidepressant medication probably engage some similar neural mechanisms, as well as mechanisms that are distinctive to each. A precise specification of these mechanisms might one day be used to guide treatment selection and improve outcomes.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Pharmacology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0049cc478251587de73048e1c39d4636d5171563

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cognitive Neuroscience

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

In Pharmacology

Citations in the corpus

Neural mechanisms of the cognitive model of depression (2011, background): “Thus, it seems that individuals with untreated depression are not only more likely to attend to negative stimuli than healthy controls (see above) but experience a stronger and longer lasting neural response to these stimuli (for an in-depth review of functional changes following depression treatmen”
Cognitive dysfunction in psychiatric disorders: characteristics, causes and the quest for improved therapy (2012, background): “Rather, a combination of pharmacotherapy with alternative strategies ( Box 5 ) may sometimes be a more effective strategy for palliating cognitive deficits in psychiatric disorders, similarly to the combination of cognitive behavioural therapy and pharmacotherapy for improving the treatment of depre”
The Personalized Advantage Index: Translating Research on Prediction into Individualized Treatment Recommendations. A Demonstration (2014, background): “Cognitive behavioral therapy and antidepressant medications are both effective interventions for depression, but they are very different methods of treatment that likely work through different mechanisms [30].”
Cognitive bias as an indicator of animal emotion and welfare: Emerging evidence and underlying mechanisms (2009, background): “Amygdala activation in more fearful/anxious people (DeRubeis et al., 2008; Krishnan and Nestler, 2008) might thus underpin an increased loss aversion.”
Evidence‐Based Assessment as an Integrative Model for Applying Psychological Science to Guide the Voyage of Treatment (2017, background): “23 symptoms change before the cognitive symptoms do, suggesting that there could be signs of progress before the patient thinks that she is doing better (DeRubeis et al., 2008).”
RESILIENCE TRAINING THAT CAN CHANGE THE BRAIN (2018, background): “…and Lindsay (2014); Holzel et al. (2011); Tang, Hölzel, and Posner (2015); Guendelman, Medeiros, and Rampes (2017) Cognitive therapy Effective treatment for depression and anxiety Amygdala, PFC Tolin (2010); Clark and Beck (2010); DeRubeis, Siegle, and Hollon (2008); de Lange et al. (2008) Note.”
Harnessing neuroplasticity for clinical applications (2011, neutral): “…gains when paired with specific activities, such as with animal models of motor deficits after CNS injury (Feeney et al., 1982; Garcia-Alias et al., 2009), or with combined use of medication and cognitivebehavioural psychotherapy in the treatment of human depression (DeRubeis et al., 2008).”
A Unified Model of Depression (2016, neutral): “Although this has been explored for a few more established treatment approaches (e.g., cognitive therapy, antidepressant medication; see DeRubeis et al., 2008), it will be particularly important to carefully test putative mechanisms (both psychological and biological) for more recently…”