Effectiveness of cognitive therapy via telephone with individual psychotherapy in major depression patients

Objective To study the effectiveness of cognitive therapy via telephone with individual psychotherapy on depression in patients with major depression.  Materials and methods There were fourty-four patients with mild to moderate depression at  outpatient  department,  Somdet  Chaopraya  Institute  of  Psychiatry  selected  by  simple  random sampling and divided into the experimental and control groups, Each group was comprised of 22 patients. The control group received usual care whereas the experimental group received cognitive therapy via telephone for 12 weeks with a total of 10 individual psychotherapy sessions and usual care. Depression Inventory assessment was applied to assess the level of depression. Descriptive statistics was used in general characteristics. Depression scores were compare among 5 periods, i.e., before and after the program and at 3rd , 6th , 9th  month follow up respectively with multivariate analysis.   Results After program finished, there were 17 patients in experimental group and 16 patients in control group. In experimental group most of them were female, mean age was 35.1 years, married, employee and agriculturist. In the control group there was an equal proportion of male and female, average age 45.3 years, married, jobless. The majority of both groups had no history of depression and suicide in the family. Before entering the program, the average level of depression in the experimental group was similar to that of the control group. The depression scores of both groups decreased over time. The experimental group tended to decrease depression score than the control group but without significance.  Conclusion Cognitive therapy via telephone with individual psychotherapy reduced depression score when given in combination with usual care and tended to decrease depression scores than usual care.  Key words  cognitive therapy, depressive disorder, individual psychotherapy, telephone