| Summary: | "Most individuals who are treated for depression get better. This is usually the outcome with evidence-based treatments like cognitive behavior therapy, interpersonal psychotherapy, problem-solving therapy, and pharmacotherapy. Nevertheless, most of these individuals will relapse back into another episode of depression within a few years of completing their treatment. This represents a serious problemat least 10 million people per year in the United States experience depressive relapse (Kessler et al., 2003)with enormous adverse consequences for depressed persons, their families, and society. Indeed, relapse may be the major problem in the treatment of depression. The tendency to relapse holds for all types of depression, all types of treatment, all environmental circumstances, and all special populations.
With approximately 20 million people in the United States experiencing serious depression at a given point in time (Kessler et al., 2003), and with most of them experiencing depressive relapse within a few years of their previous depressive episode and subsequent treatment (Mueller et al., 1999), this problem has reached crisis proportions. However, progress is being made in regard to the theory, research, and practice guidelines on relapse prevention for depression, and relapse rates can be substantially reduced by following the procedures discussed in this book. Indeed, some of the relapse-prevention research suggests that relapse rates can be reduced by 50% to 75% over multiyear follow-ups, which represents a huge reduction in depressive symptoms, signs, and misery. For this book, we have recruited 10 scholarsor groups of affiliated scholarsto write about the issues, research, and methods of relapse prevention for depression in their specific area of expertise.
The intended audience for this book is large and diverse: This book should help medical practitioners and their behavioral clinician colleagues, teachers and their students, researchers and their collaborators, depressed patients and their families and friends, and concerned members of the public who want to learn more about relapse in depression and ways to prevent it. Each of the chapters includes a discussion of theory, research, and practice. Sample studies are described and evaluated. Moreover, all of the chapters relate research to practice, and discuss the assessment, treatment, and followup care implications for clinicians and their patients. In addition to providing an up-to-date review of the relevant literature, this book also provides practical how-to information about the prevention of depressive relapse"--Introduction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).
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