Psychotherapies vs. pharmacotherapies vs. combination therapies in depressive and anxiety disorders

Abstract

Both psychological and pharmacological therapies have been found to be effective in the treatment of adult depression and anxiety disorders. Psychological treatments include cognitive behavior therapy, interpersonal therapy, behavioral activation, exposure therapies, and several other types of therapy. Pharmacological treatments include SSRIs, SNRIs TCAs, MAIOs and several other types. In this presentation the results of meta-analyses of trials directly comparing the effects of psychological and pharmalogical treatments will be presented, as well as meta-analyses of combined treatments versus either psychotherapy alone or pharmacotherapy alone. Results show that psychological and pharmacological treatments are probably about equally effective at the short term, and combined treatment is more effective than either psychotherapy or pharmacotherapy alone. In the presentation several other issues related to this group of trials will be discussed, like the influence of conflicts of interest and the (lack of) blinding in psychotherapy trials.Disclosure of interestThe author has not supplied his declaration of competing interest.