Psychotherapy Versus Pharmacotherapy of Depression: What's the Evidence?

Depression may be treated by psychotherapy or pharmacotherapy or their combination. There is an ongoing debate whether one of these approaches is possibly superior. A recent meta-analysis reported results in favour of pharmacotherapy.

Individual studies and meta-analyses on the comparative efficacy of psychotherapy vs. pharmacotherapy were reviewed.

Evidence suggests that psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy are equally efficacious in the short-term, but psychotherapy is superior in the long-term. For the recently stated hypothesis that pharmacotherapy is superior to psychotherapy in studies without a pill placebo condition, which implies equally including a positive expectancy effect for both pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy no evidence was found.

Depression may be treated by psychotherapy or pharmacotherapy with equivalent results in the short-term and advantages for psychotherapy in the long-term. As the rates of response and remission are still limited in both treatments, further improvement of treatments is required.