Cognitive Therapy for Refractory Organic Mood Disorder, Depressed: A Case Study

Abstract

This article describes the case of a 56 year old man with no previous history of psychological disorder who became depressed following neurosurgery to remove a benign subapendenoma. The patient was unresponsive to 20 months of treatment with, successively, desipramine, amitriptyline, and doxepin before showing good response to standard cognitive therapy alone. Complete remission of symptoms was achieved at 15 sessions (15 weeks) of treatment. One and five month follow-ups indicate that treatment gains were maintained.