Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) proved to be effective for the treatment of acute depressive episodes for which it was originally developed. However, for chronic depression (dysthymia), IPT with or without pharmacotherapy did not show a benefit over pharmacotherapy alone in terms of symptom reduction (Browne et al., 2002; Markowitz et al., 2005). In the study of Markowitz et al. (2005) it was not even superior to the control condition. However, the investigations using IPT with dysthymic patients had some shortcomings such as the use of a non-modified version of IPT (Browne et al., 2002) or insufficient statistical power (De Mello et al., 2001; Markowitz et al., 2005).

Data reanalysis from a larger study (Schramm et al., 2007) with 45 inpatients suffering from chronic Major Depressive Disorder that were randomized to 5 weeks of either combined treatment with IPT (15 individual and 8 group sessions) plus pharmacotherapy or to standard treatment (pharmacotherapy plus Clinical Management). The study included a prospective naturalistic follow-up, 3- and 12-months after discharge.

The brief, but intensive combined treatment program had significant acute and long-term benefits over medication monotherapy in chronically depressed inpatients. In summary, while limited by some factors, the results of this study provide hope that with intensive treatment chronically depressed patients have a good chance of getting well relatively quickly and with lasting effects.