Grant supports study of depression treatment

Lawrence H. Cohen, professor of psychology

3:15 p.m., Jan. 5, 2005--The use of cognitive therapy in treating depression in adults is the focus of research being conducted by the University of Delaware’s Lawrence H. Cohen, a professor of psychology.

The study is supported by a $250,000 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health and is being conducted in conjunction with the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research in Bala Cynwyd, Pa.

“Cognitive therapy is one of the most widely used forms of psychotherapy in the world,” Cohen said, adding it was developed about 30 years ago for the treatment of depression in adults.

The treatment is relatively brief, usually lasting 10-20 weekly sessions during which patients being treated at the Beck Institute will learn how their distorted beliefs about the world and themselves contribute to their depression, he said.

Specifically, Cohen said patients are taught to monitor the occurrence of daily events, to look at how they evaluated and tried to cope with them and to generate healthier alternative evaluations and coping strategies.

An overarching goal is to teach depressed patients how to better regulate their mood and self-esteem in the face of daily stress, he said.

“Research has shown that cognitive therapy is an effective treatment for adult depression,” Cohen said. “However, we still don’t have good answers to several questions. First, which types of depressed patients will benefit the most from cognitive therapy? For example, those with their first bout of depression, or those with a recurrence? Those who begin treatment with some mood regulation skills, or those with the worst skills? And, second, does cognitive therapy, in fact, improve patients’ ability to regulate their daily mood and self-esteem? Does it teach them these specific coping skills?

“In our study, we are attempting to answer those two questions,” Cohen said, adding that he expects to complete the study toward the end of 2005.

For the study, 60 depressed adults are asked to complete a 10-minute automated phone interview every night for seven nights as they start cognitive therapy. The interview questions concern the occurrence of daily stressors and positive events, daily mood and self-esteem and evaluations and coping strategies associated with the day’s most stressful event.

The telephone interviews are repeated about two months later, toward the end of treatment. At every therapy session, patients complete a depression questionnaire to monitor change in symptoms during treatment.

Cohen and his collaborators will be computing a variety of indices to quantify the patient’s ability to regulate mood and self-esteem in the face of daily stress.

Statistical analyses will look at the relationship between patients’ pre-therapy ability to regulate daily mood and self-esteem and their improvement in cognitive therapy. “We hypothesize that patients with relatively better skills, independent of their depression level, will show the most improvement,” Cohen said.

Another analysis will evaluate pre-therapy to post-therapy change in patients’ ability to regulate daily mood and self-esteem. “We hypothesize that patients will show an improvement in their daily mood and self-esteem regulation,” Cohen said.

Article by Neil Thomas
Photo by Kathy Atkinson

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