Psychotherapeutische Behandlung von depressiven Kindern und Jugendlichen

Background

Depression is a psychiatric disorder with debilitating symptoms (e.g. suicidal behavior) with a high prevalence rate even in children and adolescents and the disorder shows a chronic course in many cases. According to psychiatric guidelines, cognitive behavioral therapy and interpersonal therapy are the psychotherapeutic methods of choice.

Aim

This article gives an overview of the current studies on cognitive behavioral and interpersonal group therapy programs for the treatment of depression in children and adolescents as well as a short illustration of the most prevalent therapy programs.

Material and methods

A literature research (PsycInfo, Psyndex, Pubmed) revealed 280 hits. After a review of all titles and abstracts 25 studies were included in this study.

Results

Efficacy studies mainly exist for cognitive behavioral group therapy programs (effect sizes ranged from 0.02 to 1.34) from English-speaking countries. There are only a few German programs available. With respect to interpersonal group therapies there are only few articles published in English and to the best of our knowledge none in German.

Conclusion

There is a great need for further studies that investigate the efficacy of group therapies for the treatment of depression in children and adolescents especially in German-speaking countries.     

Male Wistar rats show individual differences in an animal model of conformity

Conformity refers to the act of changing one’s behaviour to match that of others. Recent studies in humans have shown that individual differences exist in conformity and that these differences are related to differences in neuronal activity. To understand the neuronal mechanisms in more detail, animal tests to assess conformity are needed. Here, we used a test of conformity in rats that has previously been evaluated in female, but not male, rats and assessed the nature of individual differences in conformity. Male Wistar rats were given the opportunity to learn that two diets differed in palatability. They were subsequently exposed to a demonstrator that had consumed the less palatable food. Thereafter, they were exposed to the same diets again. Just like female rats, male rats decreased their preference for the more palatable food after interaction with demonstrator rats that had eaten the less palatable food. Individual differences existed for this shift, which were only weakly related to an interaction between their own initial preference and the amount consumed by the demonstrator rat. The data show that this conformity test in rats is a promising tool to study the neurobiology of conformity.