By treating depression, do we also treat suicidality? The answer is far from straightforward

By guest blogger James Coyne.Edgar Allan Poe’s fictional detective C. Auguste Dupin warns against tackling questions that are too complicated to test, but too fascinating to give up. Whether psychotherapy or medication can reduce suicidality is probably such a question. Particularly if we are really interested in whether treatments can reduce attempted suicides, not whether they change patients’ answers in an interview or on a questionnaire.There is no doubt about the clinical and public health significance of the question. After all, psychotherapy and medication are treatments of choice for suicidal patients. The logic is that many, even if not all, suicidal persons are depressed; we know about effective treatments for depression; and so we can generalise from knowledge about what works for depression to what works for suicidality. However, we must hope for more definitive evidence, and a new study attempts to provide it.The authors include suicide expert Ad Kerkhof, and Pim Cuijpers, who has done some of the most influential meta-analyses and systematic reviews on the treatment of depression. Together with doctoral student Erica Weitz and depression expert Steven Hollon, they analyzed data from the US National Institute of Mental Health Treatment for Depression Collaborative Research Project (TDCRP). Conducted in the 1980s, it was then the largest ever comparison of psychotherapy and medication for treatment of depression. Two hundred and fifty patients with major ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Source Type: blogs