Cognitive-behavioral
therapy, psychotherapy, psychosynthesis, group and family therapy, biofeedback
and psychoanalysis suggest different treatments. However, a lack of
effectiveness of these therapeutic approaches is widely observed, although
several studies have shown some type of effectiveness of the cognitive-behavioral
approach in reducing depressive symptoms and in maintaining these results over
time. The benefit of psychotherapy, when effective, is largely in the absence
of side effects and in the decrease of relapse: drugs act on the symptoms, but alone
they are not able to remove the cause that triggers depression. Another line of
clinical research is related to chronotherapy which is based on the assumption
that depression, particularly seasonal and bi-polar depression, would be
related to a significant phase shift of the sleep-wake cycle. For this reason,
therapies use treatments based on light and dark balances, which aim to
regulate the sleep-wake cycle.
The Vital Needs Theory - page 30