Counselling Preferred Over Medication - British Association For Counselling And Psychotherapy

Main Category: Psychology / Psychiatry
Also Included In: Depression;  Anxiety / Stress;  Mental Health
Article Date: 16 Oct 2008 - 4:00 PDT

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People suffering from anxiety and depression prefer to receive counselling over medication because they feel it addresses their underlying problems and not just their symptoms.

This is one of the key findings in a review of UK and international research studies into the clinical-effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and acceptability of counselling. The review, Counselling in primary care: a systematic review of the evidence, published by the British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy is available now from www.bacp.co.uk/newpubs.

All the studies in the review relating to treatment preferences found that counselling was preferred to pills because it addressed the underlying causes of depression while providing an opportunity for personal contact. Antidepressants were also seen as addictive.

One study found that 15% of patients with depression preferred treatment by medication, while 24% preferred counselling and 61% wanted both. Another study into patients' attitudes towards depression care found that 86% felt that counselling was an acceptable treatment, while just 70% viewed antidepressant medication as acceptable.

The review also included a number of studies looking at the most effective treatments for conditions such as depression, post-natal depression and chronic fatigue. Counselling was found to be as effective as CBT.

It is also clear from the review that while participants of all ages report a stronger preference for counselling than for medication, older adults seem to hold a preference for psychodynamic or supportive therapies, whereas younger participants prefer more skills-based therapies such as CBT. This therefore suggests there is a need for services to have an understanding of age-differential treatment preferences in order to design interventions that optimise utilisation among both younger and older adults.

The review comes at a time when the government has recently committed £170 million over three years to be spent on its Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme.

One of the authors, Andrew Hill stated: "At a time when the use of psychological therapies in primary care is expanding, this study found that counselling is an effective treatment for a range of psychological problems and is, in many cases, as effective as CBT. This demonstrates a clear need for the expansion of the Government's IAPT programme to incorporate other methods of talking treatments in addition to CBT."

1 - Counselling in primary care: a systematic review of the evidence is published by the British Association of Counselling & Psychotherapy and is available from www.bacp.co.uk/newpubs.

2 - The review was carried out by Andrew Hill, Alison Brettle and Peter Jenkins, from the University of Salford and Claire Hulme from the University of Leeds.

3 - The British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP) is a registered charity working towards the promotion and regulation of counselling and psychotherapy, both for the profession and the public benefit.

British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP)
www.bacp.co.uk