New review of the effectiveness of CT with a range of problems is available online

Andrew Butler and Judy Beck (2000) recently conducted a review of meta-analyses on cognitive therapy for 14 disorders/problems:

ABSTRACT: How effective is cognitive therapy (CT), for which disorders, and compared to what? To answer this question, we review 14 recent meta-analyses that investigate the efficacy of CT. These meta-analyses covered collectively 9,138 subjects in 325 studies and involved 465 comparisons regarding 14 disorders or populations. Findings indicate that CT is substantially superior to no-treatment, wait list, and placebo controls for adult and adolescent unipolar depression, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder with or without agoraphobia, social phobia, and childhood depressive and anxiety disorders. The effect sizes for these comparisons (M = 0.90, SD = 0.07) were large by Cohen's (1988) criteria. Corresponding effect sizes for CT of marital distress, anger, childhood somatic disorders, and chronic pain were in the moderate range (M = 0.62, SD = 0.11).

CT was somewhat superior to antidepressants (ES = 0.38) in the treatment of adult depression. A year after treatment discontinuation, depressed patients who had been treated with CT had half the relapse rate of depressed patients who had been treated with antidepressant medication. CT was equally effective as behavior therapy in the treatment of adult depression (ES = 0.05) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (ES = .19). In the small number of direct comparisons of CT with supportive/nondirective therapy - two for adolescent depression and two for generalized anxiety disorder- CT was superior (M = 0.77, SD = 0.25). CT was somewhat superior
to a group of miscellaneous psychosocial treatments for sexual offending (ES = 0.35). Although controlled meta-analyses are lacking for CT of bulimia nervosa, large effect sizes have been obtained for pre-to-posttreatment improvement (M = 1.27, SD = 0.11).

To receive a preprint of this paper via FTP go to ftp://ftp.louisville.edu/pub/it/act/cognit-1.doc

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