Psychotherapy without antidepressants is the best treatment for depression, according to a new study. According to the researchers, psychotherapy alone beats antidepressants alone, but it also beats combination therapy (drugs plus therapy) for people with depression. Harvard researcher Nur Hani Zainal published this new analysis in Psychological Medicine.
“The present meta-analysis consistently found that psychotherapy monotherapy had stronger aggregate effects than combined treatment and ADM-only in decreasing the probability of suicide attempt, psychiatric ED visit, psychiatric hospitalization, and/or suicide death for MDD patients,” Zainal writes.
The finding contradicts conventional wisdom, which claims that combining antidepressants (ADMs) with psychotherapy is the most effective treatment for people with depression (MDD).