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The authors of this paper have conducted a large study where 240 depressed patients were randomly assigned to receive either an antidepressant drug, a placebo pill, or cognitive therapy for sixteen weekly sessions. They were assessed as to the severity of their depression at the start of the study, after eight weeks, and after sixteen weeks.
After eight weeks, the patients on the placebo had improved slightly; the ones on cognitive therapy had improved quite a bit more; and the ones on antidepressants had improved the most. After sixteen weeks, the patients on cognitive therapy had caught up with the ones on antidepressants and were now equally improved.
Results that say psychotherapy is as good as antidepressants are not particularly new, except that this study involved more subjects than most other available studies that compared medication with cognitive therapy (or indeed any form of psychotherapy). What is more interesting is that the authors followed up their patients for a year. During this time, the patients who had received cognitive therapy were only allowed the odd top-up session, whilst the ones on the antidepressant continued taking the drug, and came off it after a year. 76% of these latter patients promptly relapsed, compared to only 31% of the patients who had received cognitive therapy. By two years after treatment, the patients who remained well had decreased to about 50% in the cognitive therapy category, whilst out of the patients on antidepressant only about 20% were still well. In other words, the effects of the cognitive therapy endured in a substantial proportion of patients (they had learned something!), whereas the effects of the antidepressants were much more reversible and decreased rapidly once the medication was stopped.