Les psychothérapies de la dépression entre effet curatif et effet préventif : y a-t-il une place à privilégier ?

Many patients having suffered from depression undergo unipolar depression relapses during the five years following the treatment. Therefore international guidelines, including pharmacological and psychological interventions, were published to prevent these relapses. Nowadays a combined treatment is most often prescribed. This paper presents the results of cognitive and behaviour therapies in the prevention of relapses in uni-polar depressed patients. A psychotherapy associated with pharmacotherapy resulted in a better prevention than pharmacotherapy alone (with a gain of over than 35%). New cognitive and behaviour programmes were developed during ten years with recurrently depressed patients, these included additional booster sessions sometimes combined with well-being therapy and even with mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. The new approaches were assessed in pilot studies and their results will have to be confirmed.