Cognitive bibliotherapy for mild and moderate adolescent depressive symptomatology.

Abstract

The efficacy of cognitive bibliotherapy for adolescents experiencing mild and moderate depressive symptomatology was examined with a group of 22 community-dwelling adolescents. Cognitive bibliotherapy was determined to be superior to a delayed-treatment control condition. The treatment produced both statistically and clinically significant improvements in depressive symptoms. Treatment gains were maintained at 1-month follow-up. A significant decrease in dysfunctional thoughts, but not in negative automatic thoughts, was found after treatment. These results contribute to converging evidence on the efficacy of cognitive-behavioral treatments for adolescents experiencing depressive symptoms.

Randomized trial of a brief depression prevention program: An elusive search for a psychosocial placebo control condition

“…The average effect sizes for bibliotherapy and supportive expressive interventions by 6-month follow-up were r = .29 and r = .18 respectively, which compares favorably to the average effect for the brief CBT intervention evaluated in this trial (r = .15) and the average effect sizes for the longer CBT programs evaluated in prior trials (r = .14). These findings represent novel contributions to the literature because, to our knowledge, prior prevention trials have not compared these interventions to a waitlist control condition, but they do echo results from depression treatment trials (e.g., Ackerson et al, 1998).A second noteworthy finding was that the brief CBT depression prevention program only significantly outperformed one alternative intervention that we evaluated -journaling; it did not outperform any of the other alternative interventions that we examined. It is possible that our CBT prevention program did not produce superior effects relative to these placebo or alternative interventions because it produced smaller effects that the longer CBT prevention programs that have been evaluated in past trials.…”

“…The average effect sizes for bibliotherapy and supportive expressive interventions by 6-month follow-up were r = .29 and r = .18 respectively, which compares favorably to the average effect for the brief CBT intervention evaluated in this trial (r = .15) and the average effect sizes for the longer CBT programs evaluated in prior trials (r = .14). These findings represent novel contributions to the literature because, to our knowledge, prior prevention trials have not compared these interventions to a waitlist control condition, but they do echo results from depression treatment trials (e.g., Ackerson et al, 1998).…”

What makes self-help interventions effective in the management of depressive symptoms? Meta-analysis and meta-regression

“…This led to the inclusion of studies with a wider range of interventions, including simple provision of educational booklets as well as more complex self-help technologies. A wider variety of patients were also included, such as those with diagnosed depression, depressive (2002) 0·08 (-0·20 to 0·36) Fletcher (2005) -0·36 (-1·14 to 0·43) Floyd (1998) 0·91 (0·12 to 1·70) Grime (2004) 0·26 (-0·43 to 0·95) Holdsworth (1996) 0·08 (-0·42 to 0·58) Jacob (2002) 0·66 (0·18 to 1·14) Jamison (1995) 1·33 (0·82 to 1·85) Jorm (2004) 0·09 (-0·03 to 0·21) Landreville (1997) 0·34 (-0·49 to 1·17) Little (2004) 0·10 (-0·07 to 0·28) McKendree Smith (1998) BT 0·23 (-0·69 to 1·15) McKendree Smith (1998) CBT 1·39 (0·39 to 2·39) Mead (2005) 0·19 (-0·19 to 0·58) Patten (2003) -0·10 (-0·24 to 0·04) Philpot (1996) 0·58 (0·07 to 1·10) Proudfoot (2004) 0·42 (0·11 to 0·73) (2002) -0·10 (-0·25 to 0·05) Richards (2003) 0·32 (-0·30 to 0·94) Rohen (2002) 1·15 (0·23 to 2·07) Salkovskis (2005) 0·15 (-0·25 to 0·55) Schmidt (1983) 1·78 (0·80 to 2·76) Scogin (1987) 1·14 (0·12 to 2·16) Scogin (1989) BT 1·01 (0·23 to 1·79) Scogin (1989) CBT 1·70 (0·86 to 2·54) Selmi (1990) 1·81 (0·87 to 2·75) Stump (2003) 0·61 (-0·01 to 1·23) Webster (2003) 0·13 ( symptoms, stress, and those 'at risk '. The difference in the overall effect size between the current review and previous studies may reflect variation in inclusion criteria, and these issues must be kept in mind when interpreting the results.…”

Assessing the efficacy and effectiveness of a Positive Psychology-based self-help book

“…Therefore, the idea of a self-help interventions -and book-based interventions, in particular, which are quite affordable at ~$12 per person -is quite appealing. There is much past precedent for the idea of using book-based interventions, a practice called bibliotherapy, in the cognitive-behavioral literature (Ackerson et al, 1998;Naylor et al, 2010). Cognitive-behavioral bibliotherapy has been found to be not only effective, but in some cases comparable to traditional in-person therapy (Cuijpers, 1997), and so it has great promise as an approach for widespread dissemination of psychological interventions.…”