Best Practices Evidence-Based Best Practices:

Interpersonal Psychotherapy and Depression

Psychological diagnoses are often resistant to many treatments because the therapist is conducting therapy based on what they have seen works in the past. The problem with this approach is that although it may be a correct assumption and the therapist may have many years' experience to fall back on, this is actually an anecdotal means to a therapeutic end. The therapist most likely has the consumers best interests in mind, but they are not focused on the individual as much as what has worked in the past and may not be the best treatment for what the consumer is bringing to the sessions. The fact is that therapists, well-meaning of course, often fall into a rut in which therapy is much the same regardless the diagnosis. If examined carefully, this is not only shoddy practice it can be considered malpractice because the wrong therapy, or a therapeutic system that only provides temporary or minor help, may have been applied where a better was warranted.

That is why the movement for evidence-based practice has gained such momentum in the therapeutic community. The issue is not that therapists do not care, few with such potential would be employed in such a financially restrained profession without the intangible benefits it provides to "help" people, but that it is sometimes difficult to keep up with the research and provide the treatments for specific diagnoses that research evidence has deemed the best for that particular diagnoses. The evidence can even be so specific that it provides best treatment options for subcategories of major diagnoses (such as extreme grief that leads to a major depressive episode). This paper looks at the evidence-based best treatment for depression of interpersonal psychotherapy which is conducted by a Toronto-based company called Alliance Psychotherapy Services.

Evidence-Based Practice

The Canadian Psychological Association commissioned a task force to examine therapies...

The task force first wanted to define what was meant by evidence and wrote that "(1) peer-reviewed research evidence is central; (2) psychologists should be evidence-based not only in their general fund of knowledge but also in session-by-session work; (3) the process involves one of collaboration with a client/patient (rather than a top down process) (CPA, 2012). Armed with this understanding of what they were looking for, the team examined the research to find the best practices for specific diagnoses.
The study concluded that there were many evidenced-based treatments that could be used for specific diagnoses, but they also wanted to determine the evidence-based best treatment if that was possible. In many cases, determining a best treatment was not possible because of the evidence was too scant or the diagnosis was too broad. However, the reviewers did produce "extended vignettes" for four cases that proved evidence-based best treatments. These four were: cognitive therapy for dysthymia, emotion-focused therapy for dysthymia, psychodynamic psychotherapy for dysthymia, and interpersonal psychotherapy for depression (CPA, 2012). Practitioners of this therapy were researched, and it was found that Toronto-based Alliance Psychotherapy Services was a practitioner with a specific track record in providing interpersonal psychotherapy for depression.

Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Depression

Depression is a rather broad diagnosis that has many different subcategories. Of course, it can be a situational issue which would be provided for under the single episode classification and multiple episodes, etc. The DSM lists all of the criteria that must be met for it to be considered a mental health issue rather than normal situational cause and not all of the different diagnoses are appropriately treated by interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT). The CPA…