Psychologic Treatment of Depression Compared With Pharmacotherapy and Combined Treatment in Primary Care: A Network Meta-Analysis

Pim Cuijpers; Matthijs Oud; Eirini Karyotaki; Hisashi Noma; Soledad Quero; Andrea Cipriani; Bruce Arroll; Toshi A. Furukawa

doi:10.1370/afm.2676

Published eLetters

If you would like to comment on this article, click on Submit a Response to This article, below. We welcome your input.

Submit a Response to This Article

Compose eLetter

Title *

Author Information

Contributors
First Name and Middle Initial * First or given name, e.g. 'Peter'. Last Name * Your last, or family, name, e.g. 'MacMoody'. Email Address * Your email address, e.g. higgs-boson@gmail.com Occupation * Your role and/or occupation, e.g. 'Orthopedic Surgeon'. Affiliation * Your organization or institution (if applicable), e.g. 'Royal Free Hospital'.

Statement of Competing Interests

Competing interests? *

Yes

Please describe the competing interests

CAPTCHA

This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

What code is in the image? *

Enter the characters shown in the image.

Vertical Tabs

Jump to comment:

RE: Response to the eletter from Dr. Epling
Pim Cuijpers

Published on: 18 June 2021
RE: Search strategy clarification
John W Epling

Published on: 15 June 2021

Published on: (18 June 2021)
Page navigation anchor for RE: Response to the eletter from Dr. Epling
RE: Response to the eletter from Dr. Epling
Pim Cuijpers, professor, Vrije Universiteit
Thank you for this important question. The focus of our paper was to examine the relative effects of psychotherapy, pharmacotherapy and combined treatments of depression in primary care. Our searches were indeed aimed at identifying studies on psychotherapy, but that included the most relevant comparisons (psychotherapy versus pharmacotherapy, psychotherapy versus combined treatment and pharmacotherapy versus combined treatment), because they all include a psychotherapy arm. You are right that we have not included trials comparing pharmacotherapy versus placebo, and this may have indeed had an influence on the overall outcomes, although we believe that this would not substantially change the main outcomes.

Competing Interests: None declared.
Published on: (15 June 2021)
Page navigation anchor for RE: Search strategy clarification
RE: Search strategy clarification
John W Epling, Family Physician, Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and the Carilion Clinic
Thank you for this study. Your search strategy, as you describe for both the database and the strategy for this paper, is limited to articles which contain the (index and text) words 'psychotherapy' and 'depression' (and then further limited by study design as you note). Given that the main thrust of this paper is to compare psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy, would this have the effect of excluding "pharmacotherapy only" trials (to the extent that there are any), and thus reduce the amount of evidence on pharmacotherapy's effect in the NMA?

Competing Interests: None declared.