A Follow - Up Study On The Improvement Of Symptoms And Quality Of Life In Patients With Depression By Attribution Therapy

Major depressive disorder(MDD) is one of the common mood disorders in clinical. Its main clinical features was that significant and persistent low mood, and it also has a high rate of incidence, suicide and recurrence. Depression not only damages the social function of patients, reduced their quality of life, but also a heavy financial burden to their families or society. With the medical model and the concept of health changed, the treatment goals with depression are no longer merely the symptoms improved, more attention to improving patient’s quality of life. This study is a controlled follow-up study addressing depressive patients received drug therapy combined with attribution therapy vs. drug therapy alone. It explored the effect of attribution therapy on different dimension of depressive symptoms and quality of life.The study selected patients with depression who meet the criteria, then divided into a control group (drug therapy alone) and experimental group (drug therapy+attribution therapy), and they were measured with24-item Hamilton Depression Scale (HAMD-24), Symptom Checklist (SCL-90) and74-item General Quality Of Life Inventory (GQOLI-74) periodically. Finally, the experimental group has28patients and control group has20patients completed all the posttest. All data were analyzed by SPSS16.0, and results are as follows:(1) Between4weekends to6weekends, the IIAMD score with experimental group in average down to8, means that there is no depressive symptoms, while the control group to reach this level in8weekends. It’s considered to be attribution therapy accelerate the rehabilitation treatment of patients with depression, and enhance the efficacy of the drug.(2) The HAMD scores showed that there has varying degrees of significant differences between the two groups with anxiety/somatization factor, diurnal variation, slow and hopelessness after4weekends. After2weekend, a significant difference between two groups in sleepping disorder factor. And the experimental group lower than the control group. It shows that the experimental group has a better improvement in the factor of anxiety/somatization, diurnal variation, slow, hopelessness and sleep disorders.(3) SCL-90shows that after treatment, two groups have significant differences between somatization, interpersonal sensitivity, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive symptoms. And the experimental group scored lower than the control group.(4) After treatment the differences between two groups with symptoms are negatively correlated, indicating that the experimental group to improve the symptoms always better than the control group. After treatment, the subjects of the experimental group improved symptoms still occur, which may be attribution treatment has a lasting impact of patients with improvement in symptoms.(5) After treatment the quality of life in both groups had improved, but the experimental group better than the control group.(6) The experimental group has a larger change on the factor of movement and feeling, self-esteem and social support.(7)The change of GQOLI-74scores is not a simple up or down, but also non-linear growth.(8) The experimental group’s rate of scores with four dimensions and overall quality of life factor in GQOLI-74during24weekends to36weekends is larger than the control group. It means that attribution treatment has a lasting impact of improving the quality of life.