“I am thinking about getting treatment for depression. I have felt depressed for a while now and it is getting harder to live my life as I did, go to work, see friends, be there for my children. But I do not only suffer from depression. If I go into therapy I also want to change other things: I find it very important to be a better dad to my children, and I feel the quality of life in general is low. Can therapy for depression also solve such problems or will it only improve depression?”
People come to therapy wanting more than symptom relief
People receiving psychotherapy for depression often find it important not only to reduce depressive symptoms, but also to improve or solve other problems in their life. Many people in therapy want to improve for example social functioning, their social relationships, their emotional functioning, increase self-awareness and self-understanding, or they want to change their attitudes towards themselves or embrace life in general more.
In more concrete terms, people also hope that the therapy will help them to be a better parent, to stop the fights with their partner or their boss, that they can learn how to be more happy, or deal better with that trauma that haunts them already for so many years. So is psychotherapy able to change such problems in addition to improving depressive symptoms?
What the research shows
Most research on psychological treatments of depression is focused on reducing symptoms of depression. There are many hundreds of well-designed outcome studies focused on that. However, many of these studies also look at other outcomes. That means that we can indeed have quite some knowledge of the effects of psychological treatment for depression on other outcomes.
There is much research that shows that psychotherapy for depression also has positive effects on:
- Quality of life in general
- Social functioning and social support
- Anxiety — it reduces anxiety symptoms
- Suicidality — it reduces suicidality
- Hopelessness and dysfunctional thinking — it improves hopelessness and reduces dysfunctional thinking
There is even a small group of studies in depressed mothers that on average find that successful treatment of depressed mothers also has an important effect on the mental health of their children and on parental functioning.
In these studies, it is usually found that the larger the effects are on depression, the larger also the effects on the other outcomes are. This suggests that if a treatment of depression is successful, that also other parts of life will improve.
What about your own problems?
But these outcomes are still average outcomes for a whole group of people receiving therapy. These outcomes still do not say much about the individual problems of one person receiving therapy. There are, however, also studies that use a different type of outcome. In these studies, participants are asked to give the three most important problems they have. And then for each problem they rate how important that problem is and how much impact it has on their life on a scale from 1 to 5. These outcomes are measured before therapy and after therapy. That allows examining how much each of these individual problems has improved in terms of importance and the impact on their life. Studies using this method also show that therapies have significant effects on these very individual problems of people getting therapy.
The takeaway
So, the conclusion is: yes, if you get a treatment for depression that increases the chance that all kinds of other problems in your life also improve.
Pim Cuijpers is professor emeritus of clinical psychology and scientific director of Metapsy. He has been involved in more than 1,100 scientific studies, mostly on psychological treatments of mental health problems. This is one of a series of evidence summaries in which Prof. Cuijpers tries to answer questions from patients and clinicians, based on what is known in science about treatments. The knowledge is mostly drawn from collective work of the Metapsy collaboration of at least 15 years. Do you have other questions you would like Prof. Cuijpers to discuss? Feel free to contact us.
Literature
- Cristea IA, Huibers MJH, David D, Hollon SD, Andersson G, Cuijpers P. (2015). The effects of cognitive behavior therapy for adult depression on dysfunctional thinking: a meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, 42, 62–71.
- Cuijpers P, Miguel C, Ciharova M, Harrer M, et al. (2024). Absolute and relative outcomes of psychotherapies for eight mental disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis. World Psychiatry, 23, 267–275.
- Cuijpers P, Weitz E, Karyotaki E, Garber J, Andersson G. (2015). The effects of psychological treatment of maternal depression on children and parental functioning: a meta-analysis. European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 24, 237–245.
- Kolovos S, Kleiboer A, Cuijpers P. (2016). The effect of psychotherapy for depression on quality of life: a meta-analysis. British Journal of Psychiatry, 209, 460–468.
- Park M, Cuijpers P, van Straten A, Reynolds CF. (2014). The effects of psychological treatments of adult depression on social support: a meta-analysis. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 38, 600–611.
- Renner F, Cuijpers P, Huibers MJH. (2013). The effect of psychotherapy for depression on improvements in social functioning: a meta-analysis. Psychological Medicine, 44, 2913–2926.
- Schäfer SK, Thomas LM, Lindner S, Lieb K. (2023). World Health Organization’s low-intensity psychosocial interventions: a systematic review and meta-analysis of Problem Management Plus and Step-by-Step. World Psychiatry, 22(3), 449–462.
- van Ballegooijen W, Rawee J, Palantza C, et al. (2025). Suicidal ideation and suicide attempts after direct or indirect psychotherapy: a systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA Psychiatry, 82(1), 31–37.
- Weitz E, Kleiboer A, van Straten A, Cuijpers P. (2018). The effects of psychotherapy for depression on anxiety symptoms: a meta-analysis. Psychological Medicine, 48, 2140–2152.
