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[Harpeau]

Talk Therapy Succeeds in Reducing Suicide Risk

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/health/09suic.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1208405587-E0YdYF43sTNSnYxlXr5YZA

By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: August 9, 2005

After a year of debate over whether antidepressant drugs increase the risk of suicide, a new study finds that a standard brand of talk therapy may offer the best chance to save those at the highest risk of taking their own lives.
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Forum: Mental Health and Treatment

The therapy cut almost by half the risk of suicide attempts in extremely suicidal patients, many of whom were already taking drugs for depression, the researchers found.

The study, published in the Aug. 3 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, is the largest and most rigorous test of a psychotherapy technique in people whose attempts to end their lives have been serious enough to land them in hospitals, experts said.

Studies of depression treatments typically exclude such patients, in part because they are 30 to 40 times as likely to kill themselves as people who have not made serious suicide attempts.

"That you could cut by half the number of attempts in this population in just 8 to 10 sessions of therapy is something to write home about," said Steven D. Hollon, a professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University, who was not a part of the study.

(Article continues)

[bacasper]

It has been long known in the mental health literature that psycho- and pharmacotherapy have similar efficacies, altho not always in the same patient populations. Different studies may give a slight edge to one over the other, and this study is just another in that vein.

[mindmetoo]

10 sessions. Say $50 an an hour. That's $500 per depressed person. 15% of Americans have had depression. That's 45,000,000. That's a medical bill of $22,500,000,000. $22.5 billion dollars. The insurance industry will love those figures.

I think it's foolish to medicate people and then not provide them cognitive therapy. Whatever external forces that made them depressed in the first place isn't going to go away. This problem can be nicely solved. With money. Lots of it. Let's go!