The Most Effective Technique For Fighting Depression?

Do you know what is the most effective therapeutic technique for those suffering from depression? Some of these patients may hope to get answers from their therapists.

One study suggests that

questions may be the key

This study, led by Ohio State University researchers, is the first to show that depressed patients improve considerably, in terms of symptoms of depression, when their therapists use a technique known as the Socratic method. The study was published in the journal Behavior Research and Therapy .

Socratic method and cognitive therapy

The Socratic method or dialogue is a therapeutic tool

of cognitive restructuring

used by cognitive therapy

Socratic dialogue consists of a series of guided questions with which the therapist asks the patient to consider a new perspective to observe himself and his place in the world.

” Depressed people can get trapped in negative thinking ,” said Justin Braun, co-author of the study and a PhD student in psychology at Ohio State University.

” Socratic dialogue helps patients examine the validity of their negative thoughts and adopt a more realistic, broader point of view .”

According to cognitive therapy, people suffer from depression because of the way they interpret events and not because of the events themselves. During therapy, we try to help the patient to be more flexible in attributing meanings and to find more functional and adaptable interpretations.

In this way, the therapy not only reduces depression but also protects the patient from future episodes of depression.

” Many other studies have focused on how the patient-therapist relationship can stimulate a positive therapeutic response, ” said study author Daniel Strunk, an associate professor of psychology at Ohio State University.

” We found that the Socratic method is a predictor of improvement in the symptoms mentioned and is a more important variable than the therapeutic relationship, which has been examined more often in previous studies .”

Why is Socratic dialogue effective?

The study involved 55 patients who participated for 16 weeks in a cognitive therapy course for depression at Ohio State University. Patients had to answer a questionnaire at the beginning of each session, with the aim of measuring their depressive symptoms.

The researchers analyzed the videos of each patient’s first three sessions and estimated the frequency with which the therapist used techniques typical of Socratic dialogue.

The researchers could observe that, after sessions in which more techniques of the Socratic method were used, the depressive symptoms of the patients experienced greater improvement.

“ Patients learn this process of asking questions and being skeptical about their own negative thoughts, ” Braun said. ” When they do, they experience a significant decrease in depressive symptoms .”

A patient may, for example, tell their therapist that they feel a total failure and that life is not worth living because their marriage ended in divorce. The therapist can then ask him a series of Socratic questions to challenge the patient’s beliefs about his situation.

Researchers suggest the following questions as an example:

• Do you think everyone who has gone through a divorce has failed?
• Can you think of anyone for whom the situation is different ?
• How does divorce seem to translate into bankruptcy in you?
• What is the evidence that you have been successful in some aspect of the relationship and that, therefore, it was not a “total failure”?

“ The goal is to help the patient learn to use the same kind of questions about himself, ” said Strunk.

” We think one of the reasons cognitive therapy has these long-lasting positive effects is that patients learn to question their negative thoughts and continue to do so even after therapy is over .”

Strunk added that patients ” realize that, perhaps, they are ignoring information that goes against their own negative thoughts .”

Currently, researchers are continuing their studies with new patients for the treatment of clinical depression. One of the objectives of these new researches is to distinguish patients based on their characteristics, to make the use of the Socratic method even more effective.