Karp, J. and Frank, E. (1995) ‘Combination therapy and the depressed woman’, Depression 3, 91–8)
Background
This is the first study we will be looking at from the ‘Treatments of Dysfunctional Behaviour’ section of ‘Dysfunctional Behaviour’, as part of your OCR A2 Health and Clinical Psychology course. It is further categorised into ‘Biological.‘
Synopsis
Karp and Frank (1995) – reviewed previous studies of drug-based and psychology-based therapies to see if a combination of them was better than drug-based therapies alone.
Aim
To compare drug treatments and non-drug treatments for depression.
Method and Design
A review article of previous research into the effectiveness of single treatments and combined drug and psychological treatments of depression.
The reviewed research concentrated on women diagnosed with depression.
Procedure
Depression was analysed using a variety of depression inventories, and patients were tested prior to treatment, after treatment and in some cases after a period of time as a follow up. Some health practitioner assessments of symptoms were also used in some of the research.
Findings
Many studies found that adding psychological treatments to drug therapy did not increase the effectiveness of the drug therapy.
Conclusion
The evidence doesn’t show any better outcomes for patients offered combined therapy as opposed to only drug therapy, showing the effectiveness of drug therapy on depression.
Karp and Frank (1995) Evaluation
+ Usefulness – the research is useful because it suggests that adding psychological therapy to the therapy regime of a patient being treated by drugs is no more effective than just the drugs. However, the research does not show if either drug-based or psychological-based therapies are more effective.
– Gynocentric – the results may not be easily generalisable to a male population.
– Secondary sources are not necessarily free from bias and other issues and those issues may have been translated to this piece of research.
References
Karp, J. and Frank, E. (1995) ‘Combination therapy and the depressed woman’, Depression 3, 91–8)
Further Reading
Psych Yogi’s Top Ten Psychology Revision Tips for the A* Student
