ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the superiority of couple therapy over an approved antidepressant regime both in reducing the symptoms of depression and in maintaining the improvement. Depression is one of the commonest psychiatric disorders, affecting one in four women and one in seven men at some point in their life in high-income countries. Depression is known to respond to a number of different treatments but has a strong propensity to recur, which was the reason for including in the trial a prolonged follow-up period. Couple therapy shares with other psychosocial interventions the problem of not having financial backing for its implementation. Although the couple therapy did not specifically target critical comments, one of the aims was to help the patient and partner experiment with new ways of relating to one another. Acquiring the skills needed for couple therapy is a lengthy procedure and demands commitment.
