Evidence map›Paper›PMID 29486804›Full record

ArticleEpidemiology and psychiatric sciences2019

Was Eysenck right after all? A reassessment of the effects of psychotherapy for adult depression.

P Cuijpers, E Karyotaki, M Reijnders, D D Ebert

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PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Article in Epidemiology and psychiatric sciences, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 72 papers, 17 of them syntheses that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
72citing papers in PubMed, 17 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

72 citing papers in PubMed, 17 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.

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12 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

P CuijpersDepartment of Clinical,Neuro and Developmental Psychology,Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute,Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam,The Netherlands.
E KaryotakiDepartment of Clinical,Neuro and Developmental Psychology,Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute,Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam,The Netherlands.
M ReijndersDepartment of Clinical,Neuro and Developmental Psychology,Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute,Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam,The Netherlands.
D D EbertClinical Psychology and Psychotherapy,Institute for Psychology,Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg,Erlangen,Germany.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

aimsIn the 1950s, Eysenck suggested that psychotherapies may not be effective at all. Twenty-five years later, the first meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials showed that the effects of psychotherapies were considerable and that Eysenck was wrong. However, since that time methods have become available to assess biases in meta-analyses.

methodsWe examined the influence of these biases on the effects of psychotherapies for adult depression, including risk of bias, publication bias and the exclusion of waiting list control groups.

resultsThe unadjusted effect size of psychotherapies compared with control groups was g = 0.70 (limited to Western countries: g = 0.63), which corresponds to a number-needed-to-treat of 4.18. Only 23% of the studies could be considered as a low risk of bias. When adjusting for several sources of bias, the effect size across all types of therapies dropped to g = 0.31.

conclusionsThese results suggest that the effects of psychotherapy for depression are small, above the threshold that has been suggested as the minimal important difference in the treatment of depression, and Eysenck was probably wrong. However, this is still not certain because we could not adjust for all types of bias. Unadjusted meta-analyses of psychotherapies overestimate the effects considerably, and for several types of psychotherapy for adult depression, insufficient evidence is available that they are effective because too few low-risk studies were available, including problem-solving therapy, interpersonal psychotherapy and behavioural activation.

Indexed as

AdultBiasDepressionHumansPsychotherapyTreatment OutcomeDepressionoutcome studiespsychotherapyrandomised controlled trials

Identifiers

PMID29486804
PMCPMC6999031

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.