Abstract: Antidepressant medications are the most popular treatment for unipolar depression in the United States, although there may be safer alternatives that are equally or more effective.

Insight-oriented psychotherapy was the least effective on most outcome measures at both evaluation periods; 30% of those patients remained in the moderate to severe range of depression, in comparison with 19% of those in the control condition. There were no significant differences between drug therapy and relaxation therapy on any outcome measure. No treatment had a significantly better outcome with the severely depressed subgroup (McLean & Taylor, 1992).