Cognitive-behavioural therapy for depression in older people
Paola Adele De Martino, Alessandro Couyoumdjian
This paper examines the state-of-the-art in relation to cognitive-behavioural therapy applied to
depressive disorders in the elderly. The research work considered referred to the last thirty years. The
review included those studies in which cognitive-behavioural therapy was applied in group and individual
settings as a monotherapy or associated with drugs. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is widely recognized
as an effective therapy for depressive disorder both in individual and in group settings. It has also been
recognized as effective in therapy combined with drugs. However, the paucity of studies associated
with the methodological limitations does not allow the results to be generalized to the entire elderly
population. Combining clinical practice with empirical rigour appears to be the greatest difficulty in
these studies, a difficulty that leads to a low external validity.
Keywords
Cognitive behavioural therapy, Late-life depression, Gerontology, Combined therapy.
