The effect of two cognitive therapies on subjective wellbeing of individuals with depression: results from a randomised controlled trial

Abstract

Background

Despite the burden associated to depression, current standards of care are still limited in scope and effectiveness. In addition, therapy outcomes have frequently focused solely on symptoms, leaving patients’ wellbeing relatively unaddressed.

Aims

The objective of this study was to test whether two cognitive therapies increased subjective wellbeing in a sample of adults diagnosed with a depressive disorder, additionally assessing the relationship between this growth and decreases in both depression severity and psychological distress.

Methods

Data from 116 participants from a randomised controlled trial comparing the efficacy of cognitive behavioural therapy and dilemma-focused therapy were analysed. Multilevel linear models were employed, together with correlational analyses.

Results

Results showed that both interventions significantly improved wellbeing with moderate to large effect sizes, while no significant differences were found between treatments. In turn, the increase in wellbeing was significantly associated to improvements in depression severity and psychological distress.

Conclusions

This study sheds light on the complex relationship between happiness and depression, supporting their conceptualisation as related yet independent human experiences, and strengthening subjective wellbeing as a useful outcome for psychological research. Psychotherapy is presented as an effective intervention to enhance wellbeing, even among individuals with severe depressive symptoms.

Keywords:

• Major depressive disorder
• dysthymic disorder
• psychotherapy
• personal construct theory
• happiness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The primary dataset analysed in this study is publicly available on osf.io/gyfpx (Feixas, 2018). Specific wellbeing data can be provided by corresponding author upon request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under Grants PSI2011-23246 and BES-2015-071490; and the Government of Catalonia under Grant 2014SGR717.