Am J Psychiatry 1995; 152:1504-1509
Copyright © 1995 by American Psychiatric Association
Individual psychotherapies for depressed HIV-positive patients
JC Markowitz, GL Klerman, KF Clougherty, LA Spielman, LB Jacobsberg, B Fishman, AJ Frances, JH Kocsis and SW Perry 3rd
Department of Psychiatry, Cornell University Medical College, New York, NY 10021, USA.
OBJECTIVE: The authors present preliminary data from two treatment
modalities of a randomized clinical trial in which they compared 16- week
interventions of interpersonal psychotherapy to supportive psychotherapy.
METHOD: HIV-positive patients who were not acutely medically ill and had
scores of 15 or higher on the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale were
randomly assigned to one of four treatment modalities. They were assessed
by the Hamilton scale and Beck Depression Inventory at 8 and 16 weeks. Most
subjects who underwent either interpersonal psychotherapy (N = 16) or
supportive psychotherapy (N = 16) were male, gay or bisexual, white, and
college educated. RESULTS: Results of last-observation-carried-forward and
completer analyses showed that scores on the Hamilton scale and Beck
Depression Inventory decreased significantly for both treatments.
Differential improvement for interpersonal psychotherapy appeared by
midtreatment (week 8) and persisted at termination. CONCLUSIONS: This is
the first controlled study of individual psychotherapies for depressed HIV-
positive patients. Results suggest that a specific antidepressant
psychotherapy, interpersonal psychotherapy, has advantages over a
supportive therapy.
