Behavioral Activation Intervention in a Patient with Depressive Symptomatology

cians in behavioral activation methods aimed at palliating depressive symptoms, including graded task assignment, goal setting scheduling, reinforcement of social contact behaviors or performance of gratifying activities (Kanter, Busch, & Rusch, 2009; Lejuez, Hopko, & Hopko, 2002; Martell, Addis, & Jacobson, 2001). In fact, there was always a place for these strategies in the most serious cases, but they were considered as part of an initial approach, and as a preparatory step for the use of cognitive techniques whose procedures, it was believed, would enable solid improvements in depressive conditions and the avoidance of relapses (Beck, Rush, Shaw, & Emery, 1979). However, recent meta-analytical reviews (Cuijpers, van Straten, & Warmerdam, 2007) and experimental studies comparing different therapeutic approaches — antidepressant medication, cognitive therapy and behavioral activation therapy — (Dimidjian et al., 2006) have revealed that purely behavioral interventions are sufficiently effective and efficient for depressive conditions, even in the long term (Dobson et al., 2008). At the same time as the really useful components of cognitive therapy were being studied systematically (Gortner, Gollan, Dobson, & Jacobson, 1998; Jacobson et al., 1996), a clinical approach to depression was being formulated that incorporated the analysis of the factors maintaining it. This approach recovered the explanatory model of Ferster (1973) and Lewinsohn’s (1974) first model, but enlarged on them, stressing the functional character that should guide all case analyses (Hopko, Lejuez, Ruggiero, & Eifert, 2003; Jacobson & Gortner, BEHAVIORAL ACTIVATION INTERVENTION IN A PATIENT WITH DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMATOLOGY