Investigating the rates of change in depressive symptoms for adults in individual, couple, and family therapy.

While individual therapy is a common treatment for depressive symptoms, adults with depressive symptoms also engage in couple and family therapy. To date, no studies have fully compared the effectiveness of these three therapy models in a naturalistic clinical setting. This study investigates the extent that the rates of changes in depressive symptoms across 16 sessions of treatment differ across individual, couple, and family therapy. We analyzed clinical data from the Marriage and Family Therapy Practice Research Network (MFT-PRN; Johnson et al., 2016), which is clinical data from clinics across the United States. Depressive symptoms were measured using the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9). The sample included adults in individual therapy (n = 1402), couple therapy (n = 672), and family therapy (n = 189). Latent growth models were conducted in Mplus. Adults in individual therapy exhibited higher initial depressive symptoms that had a steeper decline in depressive symptoms compared to those in couple and family therapy. However, adults in all three therapy types had declines in depressive symptoms across the 16 sessions of treatment. The use of secondary data from a natural clinical setting limits insight into reasons for attending therapy and treatment modalities used. The sample was predominantly White and middle-class. Therapists can use these treatment types to address a variety of concerns related to depressive symptoms. Relatedly, these findings encourage therapists to frequently assess depressive symptoms throughout treatment.