Gestalt dialogues as a treatment for mild depression: time works just as well

In a treatment analogue design, 44 moderately depressed volunteer subjects were divided randomly into four groups: attention-placebo; Gestalt empty chair dialogues designed to be personally relevant and high in affect; dialogues designed to be personally irrelevant and neutral in affect; and groups in which strong affect was encouraged, but no dialogues enacted. Groups met 1 hour per week for 4 weeks. Each group was pretested, post-tested, and follow-up tested with an abbreviated MMPI, the Depression Adjective Check List, and experimenter questionnaires. A series of 4 X 3 ANOVAs indicated significant main effects for time across all dependent variables. Also, anxiety and social introversion decreased over time in all groups. No other main or interactional effects were significant. These results suggest that mild depression, as well as anxiety and social introversion, dissipated over time and remained lower regardless of whether the subject had any treatment.