Efficacious psychological treatments for depression

Efficacious psychological treatments for depression. Although this is a rev iew of de efficacy of psychological treatments for unipolar depression, we begin by making reference to pharmacological treatments. It should be recog nized that pharmacological treatments were the first to be established and are the most used, thereby setting the standard for new treatments. Referin g to psychological treatments, there are three with sufficient controlled s tudies to be able to affirm that they are well established. They are behavi or therapy (which includes six variants: program of pleasing activities, tr aining in social skills, Lewinsohn's 'coping with depression course', self- control therapy, problem-solving therapy, and couple behavior therapy), Bec k's cognitive therapy, and Klerman's interpersonal psychotherapy. We can ad d that these therapies have been demostrated to be at least as effective as the best pharmacological treatments. Moreover, we conclude that psychologi cal treatment should be the election for unipolar depression. In any case, certain limitations in current conceptions about depression are discussed.