Cognitive Behavioral Therapy In Older Adults

1. The research question being addressed in this study is how effective is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for older adults in Primary care. Their hypothesis was that CBT would be more effective than both treatment as usual (TAU) care and their talking control (TC). This is an important topic because about ¾ of the major depressed older adult population is remaining depressed a year later. Also not much research has been done on this topic and the research that has been done had high drop out rates, were inconclusive and many other limitations. This study wanted to address some of these limitations by having the largest randomized controlled trail ever attempted for this study, eliminating small sample size and non-randomized control study as issues. They also challenged the belief from a previous study that older patients are lonely and just want someone to talk to by making their control have no therapeutic effects.
2. The methods they used to recruit their participants was through the North Central Thames General Practice Research Network that included 47 general practices and over 140,000 people to screen that were 65 and older. They used many different referrals to recruit and searched through the database. They used a 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale to assess depression and any elder who scored
Some further questions that I have that this study brought up was that since their depression was only maintained and not improved over time, would they need more CBT sessions? If so, how many more and how long would each session be? That would be a very good study and it would provide the optimum levels for CBT treatment. I also would like to know how well CBT compares to other treatments for depression like interpersonal therapy and a new technique called Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy. The patients didn’t improve on anxiety and social functioning so I am curious to know what would help the elderly improve on those