Combined psychological and pharmacotherapy of stress and depression
Most commonly the management of stress, when the demands being made on the individual exceeding their capacity to cope, focus on the psychological and psychosocial processes of lessening the demands and boosting the individual’s capacity to cope. There are few controlled trials of “stress management”. The treatment of the affective consequences of the stress process, clinical depression and anxiety disorders, may involve effective pharmaco- or psychotherapy, or both. There is now extensive evidence that talking therapies in particular cognitive behavioural therapy(CBT) and interpersonal psychotherapy(IPT) are effective in the management of clinical affective disorders, particularly anxiety and depression. The mechanisms for the psychological influence of talking therapies may ultimately come down to the same biological changes that result from medication for these disorders. It is no longer about separating mind and brain, but about determining the most effective and efficient mechanism for causing change in those for whom the stress process has resulted in clinical distress.