Couples Therapy for Depression

Couples therapy for depression has the goal of modifying negative interactional thoughts, furthering intimacy, and changing interpersonal relationships in depression.

Couples therapy is sometimes chosen as one of the suggested treatments for depression.

In this paper.

To compare and examine the effectiveness of individual psychotherapy and couples therapy for depression.The two objectives of the study were to compare the effects of medication and couples therapy and to examine the availability of treatments.

Conclusion.

Couples therapy was as effective as individual psychotherapy.

14 studies with 651 participants from Europe, North America and Israel.

80% of participants were Caucasian (may not apply to other ethnicities)

Participants had moderate depression and were between 36 and 47 years old.

In 9 studies with 304 participants, there was no evidence of a difference in efficacy between couples therapy and individual psychotherapy at the end of treatment.

(SMD -0.17, 95% CI -0.44 to 0.10, 6 studies with 237 participants (RR 0.94, 95% CI 0.72 to 1.22, low quality evidence)

Studies with more than 6 months of follow-up found no difference between the two conditions.There were few data available for comparison with pharmacotherapy.

There was little data available for comparison with pharmacotherapy. 95 participants from two studies showed a clear advantage for couples therapy in terms of dropout (RR 0.31, 95% CI 0.15-0.61, very low quality evidence).

The three studies with 90 participants showed a large significant effect in favor of couples therapy for both depressive symptom levels compared to no treatment.

(SMD -0.95, 95% CI -1.59 to -0.32, very low quality evidence) 

When compared to individual psychotherapy with regard to relationship concerns

6 studies with 187 participants showed that couples therapy was more effective in reducing levels of distress.(SMD -0.50, CI -0.97 to -0.02, very low quality evidence) 

Reviewer's comments.

Although there is a suggestion that couples therapy is as effective as individual psychotherapy in ameliorating depressive symptoms, and more effective in improving the relationships of suffering couples, the low or very low quality of the evidence severely limits the possibility of drawing firm conclusions.

Barbato A, D'Avanzo B, Parabiaghi A. Couples therapy for depression. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2018, No. 6. Number: CD004188. doi: 10.1002 / 14651858.CD004188.pub3.

The results do not overwhelmingly favor couples therapy, so the effectiveness of the psychotherapy was about the same for singles and married couples.

However, in the case of married couples, couples therapy was more likely to contribute to the improvement of the partner's relationship than individual therapy, so I think it can be actively adopted.

I am a married man myself, but I felt that our relationship improved when I relied on my partner rather than continuing to suffer individually.

In my case, I didn't ask for professional help, but if you want to implement this right away, why don't you ask for help first?

If you have respect for each other, you will get a decent response.