EMPIRICALLY VALIDATED TREATMENT FOR (DEPRESSION)

Empirically Validated Treatment for (Depression)

Empirically Validated Treatment for (Depression)

Outline of the Study

The main purpose of this study is to describe the empirically validated treatment for depression.

Discussion

Depression is one of the most common psychological problems, affecting nearly everyone through either personal experience or through depression in a family member. Each year over 17 million American adults experience a period of clinical depression. The cost in human suffering cannot be estimated. Depression can interfere with normal functioning, and frequently causes problems with work, social and family adjustment (Arborelius, 1996). The Division 12 (Clinical Psychology) Task Force on Promotion and Dissemination of Psychological Interventions issued a report in October of 1993 establishing criteria for judging whether a treatment may be considered to be empirically validated as well as forming an initial list of well-established and probably efficacious treatments. Please see that report (Task Force on Promotion and Dissemination of Psychological Procedures, 1995, 1996) for complete details (Kendrick, 2006). In order to facilitate the dissemination of these treatments, the Task Force on Psychological Interventions has now collected a list of manuals detailing the well-established treatments. (One exception will be noted by careful readers: Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Bulimia was inadvertently omitted from the initial Task Force list but is included in this resource.) Of course, this list will be updated as new treatments are empirically evaluated. In addition, several treatments that are in fact empirically validated but were overlooked in the initial report will be added to the updated version (Mann, 2002). We want to emphasize that this list is inclusive, not exclusive.

In order to compile this resource listing of manuals, we wrote to leading investigators in the respective areas of treatment research, particularly those whose work formed the basis for judging a particular treatment to be efficacious. These ...