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- Page navigation anchor for RE: Response to the eletter from Dr. EplingRE: Response to the eletter from Dr. Epling
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. - Page navigation anchor for RE: Search strategy clarificationRE: Search strategy clarification
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.