Treatment-resistant depressed patients show a good response to Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy

Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) is a class-based programme designed for use in the prevention of relapse of major depression. Its aim is to teach participants to disengage from those cognitive processes that may render them vulnerable to future episodes. These same cognitive processes are also known to maintain depression once established, hence a clinical audit was conducted to explore the use of MBCT in patients who were currently actively depressed, and who had not responded fully to standard treatments. The study showed that it was acceptable to these patients and resulted in an improvement in depression scores (pre-post Effect Size=1.04), with a significant proportion of patients returning to normal or near-normal levels of mood.