COMPARATIVE OUTCOMES AMONG THE PROBLEM AREAS OF INTERPERSONAL PSYCHOTHERAPY FOR DEPRESSION

While Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) has proven to be an effective treatment for acute depression, the effectiveness of treatment in each of the four problem areas (grief, role transitions, role disputes, interpersonal deficits) has received little attention. The goal of this project was to provide some evidence for the specificity of IPT by comparing the success of treatment among patients whose treatment focused on each of the four problem areas. We hoped to understand how the patient characteristics and interpersonal problems most closely linked to the onset of an individual's current depression contributed to the success of IPT, with a particular emphasis on the role of personality pathology. In this sample of 181 individuals suffering from acute unipolar depression, chi-square analyses and the Wilcoxon Rank Sum Test indicated that the level of personality pathology reported by study participants was quite similar across all problem area groups. This was true when personality pathology was measured both continuously and categorically. Contrary to prediction, survival analyses indicated that patients in each of the four problem area groups demonstrated similar time to remission from their depression. The meaning and significance of these findings is described below