Karin Meissner

A variety of psychological interventions to treat depressive disorders have been developed and are used in primary care. In a systematic review, we compared the effectiveness of psychological treatments grouped by theoretical background, intensity of contact with the health care professional, and delivery mode for depressed patients in this setting. Randomized trials comparing a psychological treatment with usual care, placebo, another psychological treatment, pharmacotherapy, or a combination treatment in adult depressed primary care patients were identified by database searches up to December 2013. We performed both conventional pairwise meta-analysis and network meta-analysis combining direct and indirect evidence. Outcome measures were response to treatment (primary outcome), remission of symptoms, post-treatment depression scores and study discontinuation. A total of 37 studies with 7,024 patients met the inclusion criteria. Among the psychological treatments investigated in at least 150 patients face-to-face cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT; OR 1.80; 95 % credible interval 1.35–2.39), face-to-face counselling and psychoeducation (1.65; 1.27–2.13), remote therapist lead CBT (1.87; 1.38–2.53), guided self-help CBT (1.68; 1.22–2.30) and no/minimal contact CBT (1.53; 1.07–2.17) were superior to usual care or placebo, but not face-to-face problem-solving therapy and face-to-face interpersonal therapy. There were no statistical differences between psychological treatments apart from face-to-face interpersonal psychotherapy being inferior to remote therapist-lead CBT (0.60; 0.37–0.95). Remote therapist-led (0.86; 0.21–3.67), guided self-help (0.93; 0.62–1.41) and no/minimal contact CBT (0.85; 0.54–1.36) had similar effects as face-to-face CBT. The limited available evidence precludes a sufficiently reliable assessment of the comparative effectiveness of psychological treatments in depressed primary care patients. Findings suggest that psychological interventions with a cognitive behavioral approach are promising, and primarily indirect evidence indicates that it applies also when they are delivered with a reduced number of therapist contacts or remotely. Systematic review registration: 01KG1012 at http://www.gesundheitsforschung-bmbf.de/de/2852.php

Several systematic reviews have summarized the evidence for specific treatments of primary care patients suffering from depression. However, it is not possible to answer the question how the available treatment options compare with each other as review methods differ. We aim to systematically review and compare the available evidence for the effectiveness of pharmacological, psychological, and combined treatments for patients with depressive disorders in primary care.

While several recent large randomized trials found clinically relevant effects of acupuncture over no treatment or routine care, blinded trials comparing acupuncture to sham interventions often reported only minor or no differences. This raises the question whether (sham) acupuncture is associated with particularly potent nonspecific effects. We aimed to investigate the size of nonspecific effects associated with acupuncture interventions.

The use of placebo interventions outside clinical trials is ethically, professionally and legally controversial. Little is known about the frequency and circumstances of placebo use in clinical practice. Our aim was to summarize the available empirical studies addressing these issues.

Recent reviews on placebo effects in clinical trials suggest that objective changes following placebo treatments may not exist or, at least, have been considerably overestimated. However, the possibility that yet unidentified subsets of parameters are responsive to placebo treatments has not been taken into account. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to examine the effects of placebo treatments on objectively measured outcome parameters by specifically focusing on peripheral disease processes.