Creative, Person-Centered Narrative Psychopharmacotherapy of Depression

Depression as a multifactorial, polygenic mental disorder with thousands faces, poorly defined endophenotypes and characterized with high rate of morbidity, comorbidity, disability, mortality, and treatment failures, remains a relentless illness with heavy burden on patients, their families, and society. Therapeutic outcome of depression needs to be significantly improved and overcome the 65% barrier. The best treatments are those that utilize and integrate multiple modalities. The time is ripe for psychiatry to find its transdisciplinary integrative soul and increase treatment effectiveness. Creation and fostering hope, meaning, personal responsibility, spirit of optimism, and commitment can significantly contribute to overall positive response to pharmacotherapy, but in the other way round drug treatment can also contribute to creation and fostering hope, meaning, personal responsibility, spirit of optimism, and commitment. This chapter addresses the concept of creative person-centered narrative psychopharmacotherapy (CP-CNP) as a transdisciplinary integrative strategy for improvement of the therapeutic effectiveness in patients with depression.