TEMPORAL COURSE OF CHANGE OF DEPRESSION

Two hundred fifty moderately to severely depressed outpatients were ra ndomly assigned to 16 weeks of cognitive-behavioral therapy, interpers onal psychotherapy, imipramine plus clinical management (IMI-CM), or p ill placebo plus clinical management. Two hundred thirty-nine patients actually began treatment. The most rapid change in depressive symptom s occurred in the IMI-CM condition, which achieved significantly bette r results than the other treatments at 8 and 12 weeks on 1 or more var iables. Change over the course of treatment on variables hypothesized to be most specifically affected by the respective treatments was foun d only in the case of pharmacotherapy, in which imipramine produced si gnificantly greater changes on the endogenous measure at 8 and 12 week s.