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The cognitive therapy of depression rests on substantial theoretical, empirical and clinical foundations: a reply to Dr Gipps

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Stirling Moorey
Stirling Moorey*
Affiliation:
South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK
*
stirling.moorey@slam.nhs.uk
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Dr Gipps claims that the cognitive therapy for depression rests on a mistake. But his anachronistic analysis of Beck's early research from the perspective of current psychoanalytic theory misses the point. The value of the research was not that it disproved psychoanalytic theory, but that it generated a model of depression that has revolutionised psychotherapy research. Psychoanalysts are belatedly adopting research methods that Beck pioneered half a century ago. The cognitive model of depression has explanatory power for both maintenance and vulnerability and has substantial research underpinning it. Cognitive therapy for depression has a larger body of evidence for its efficacy and relapse prevention effect than any other psychotherapy. Transference-focused approaches to depression have yet to establish themselves in the same way.

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Special Articles
Information
BJPsych Bulletin , Volume 41 , Issue 5 , October 2017 , pp. 272 - 275
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Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an open-access article published by the Royal College of Psychiatrists and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Copyright © 2017 The Authors

Footnotes

Declaration of interest

None.

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