Original articleComparative effects of short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy in depression: A meta-analytic approach
Section snippets
Search for Studies
In addition to the usual search for studies via reviews, meta-analyses, and textbooks, a computerized search was carried out using Medline and PsycLIT with the following key words: Depression, psychotherapy, psychodynamic/psychoanalytic, study. The search was carried out for the following periods: 1966–12/1998 (Medline) and 1977–12/1998 (PsycLIT). Fifteen articles were identified describing empirical results of STPP compared to CBT and/or BT in depression Barkham et al. 1996, Covi & Lipman 1987
Results
This review is based on the results reported by the authors of the original studies, unless otherwise stated. The results of the studies were reviewed with regard to three aspects: statistically significant effects, effect sizes, and clinical significance (percentages of patients remitted or improved).
Meta-analytic evaluation: differences in effect sizes and mean success rates of stpp and cbt/bt
As already mentioned, only three of the six studies provided the data to assess effect sizes in form of Cohen's d (Cohen, 1988). However, the success rates reported can be used to assess an effect size estimator Rosenthal & Rubin 1982, Rosenthal 1995. These data were provided by all but one study (Barkham et al., 1996, see Table 1). As a measure of effect size I calculated the φ-correlation for the resulting 2 × 2 or 2 × 3 frequency tables. The φ-correlation is identical to the effect size
Discussion
This review is the first attempt to carry out a comparison of the efficacy of STPP and CBT/BT for a specific psychiatric disorder: (major) depression. Unfortunately, not more than six studies currently exist, which meet the applied inclusion criteria. In the six studies included in this review, the total number of patients treated with either STPP or CBT/BT is N = 416. This means about 200 patients were treated with STPP and about another 200 patients were treated with CBT/BT.
According to the
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