comparing efficacy of group cognitive- behavioral psychotherapy, fluoxetine and hypiran in treatment of depression in women

aim and background: there are various methods for treatment of depression. this study was aimed to examine and compare the efficacy of three therapeutic techniques namely group cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy, drug therapy with fluoxetin and drug- therapy with the herbal medicine named hypiran in treatment of depression in women. method and materials: in an experimental study, a total number of 45 female patients with major depression were randomly selected. they had been already screened with the depression-measurement questionnaire and further diagnosed by a psychiatrist to suffer from major depression.  patients  were assigned to three experimental groups namely cognitive- behavioral , fluoxetin and hypiran groups. the three groups were assessed both before and after the intervention, and  after the follow up period as well. data were analyzied using one-way anova, ancova and post- hoc tests. findings: comparing changes in the mean scores, there was found significant differences between the efficacy of the three therapeutic techniques (p < 0.01). schefe’s test also revealed that group cognitive behavioral therapy was more effective than hypiran (p < 0.01). the follow-up assessments showed that the efficacy of the therapeutic techniques were still in force even after 100 days. of course significant differences were found between the perseverance of efficacies of the different therapeutic techniques (p < 0.01). conclusions: all the three mentioned therapeutic techniques were proved effective in treatment of depression. cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy was found to be more effctive than hypiran in the post intervention phase and than the both other techniques in the follow-up assessment.