Systemic Family Therapy Combined with Sertraline Treatment for Depression

Objective To investigate the clinical efficacy of systemic family therapy combined with sertraline in the treatment of major depression.Methods Seventy-six patients were randomly assigned to treatment with sertraline alone(sertraline group,n=38) or in combination with systemic family therapy(therapy group,n=38).Hamilton Depression Rating Scale(HAMD-17),Gross Rating Scale(GAS) and Treatment Emergent Symptom Scale(TESS) were used to evaluate the effectiveness,adverse reactions and recurrence rate within 2 years.Results HAMD total scores,reduction rate and GAS scores significantly decreased at 2 and 4 weeks after treatment in both groups(P0.01),but no obvious differences were found between the two groups(P0.05).At 8 and 12 weeks after treatment,GAS scores and reduction rate of HAMD total scorers in combination group were significantly different from sertraline group(P0.05),and the recurrence rate within 2 years in combination group(20%,7/35) was significantly lower than that in sertraline group(36%,13/36)(P0.05).Conclusions The combination of systemic family therapy and sertraline is superior to sertraline alone for achieving long-term effectiveness and decreasing recurrence rate in the treatment of major depression.