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The Eclectic Approach 

This is a therapeutic approach that incorporates a variety of therapeutic principles and philosophies in order to create the ideal treatment program to meet the specific needs of the patient or client.

Empirical Research Support 

Pampallona et al. (2004) 

 

  • Aim: To analyze whether the Eclectic approach is useful

  • Procedure: 932 patients took only antidepressants and 910 received a combination of psychotherapy and medication.

  • Findings: 

    • Patients in combined treatment improved significantly more than those receiving drug treatment alone

    •  Studies that ran more than 12 weeks had  a significant reduction of dropouts

  • Implication:

    • the eclectic approach is a lot of effective than only medication

    • A patient should receive both treatment

  • Strength: can be applied to treatment and can the randomized trials gives internal validity. 

  • Limitations: Might be the placebo effect, hard to generalize to all. 

Everyone is different so they should choose a treatment that suits them the best. However, to get the best treatment, it might take a long time and this can cause the patient to miss the best time of treatment. 

 

I suggest the eclectic approach with  both medication ( SSRI) and CBT .  

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Klerman et al. (1974)

 

Aim" To test the effectiveness of treatment with only antidepressant, only psychotherapy and both

 

Procedure: 

  • 150 female diagnosed with depression.

  • Patients divided into 3 groups 

    • (1) antidepressant alone (2) antidepressant and psychotherapy (3) mo medication but more psychotherapy (4) the placebo group 

  • Result: Relapse rate high for placebo group ( 36%), antidepressant only had a relapse rate of 12%, psychotherapy only had relapse rate of 16.7% and the eclectic approach had relapse rate of 12.5.  

 

This experiment shows that there is no much difference between medication and eclectic approach. However, one is likely to stop taking medication after a while and reliance on antidepressant may be an issue. Thus, it is better to use a combination of treatment to have a balanced recovery. 

Best Treatment

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