Cognitive Group Therapy, Stress Management, and Desensitization Through Eye Movement Reprocessing in Reducing Depression Severity Among Patients with Spinal Cord Injuries

During the recent decades, there have been two major leaps in treatment of depression using the medication to pacify and relieve depression signs and behavior cognitive therapy. The available evidences emphasize the treatment success with some group training methods including stress management, cognitive group therapy, and eye movement desensitization in reducing depression. The present study aimed to compare the effectiveness of these methods on reducing depression in patients with spinal cord injuries. In a quasi-experimental project, 60 patients with spinal cord injuries were recruited and randomly allocated to one of the following treatment groups: stress management, cognitive group therapy, and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, and no cognitive treatment groups. Depression status and severity was determined using Beck depression inventory. Although baseline depression state was comparable across the study groups, following training, the mean depression score in the groups received eye movement desensitization (14.60 ± 3.15) and stress management (22.66 ± 3.37) were significantly lower than in cognitive group therapy (27.33 ± 4.15) or in no cognitive treatment groups (32.13 ± 1.80) (P < 0.001). Between-group covariate analysis showed superiority of eye movement desensitization method on other treatment methods including stress management and cognitive group therapy (P < 0.001). Our study showed higher effectiveness of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing methods compared with stress management and cognitive group therapy in reducing depression severity in patients with spinal cord injuries.