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Religious versus Conventional Internet-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Depression

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Abstract

The accessibility and efficacy of two Internet-supported interventions for depression: conventional cognitive behavioral therapy (C-CBT) and religious CBT (R-CBT) were investigated. Depressed participants (N = 79) were randomly assigned to either active treatment or wait-listed control group. Self-report measures of depression, anxiety, and life quality were collected before, immediately after, and 6 months after the intervention. Significant differences among the three conditions emerged at post-intervention with medium to large effect sizes (Cohen’s d between 0.45 and 1.89), but no differences between the R-CBT and C-CBT were found. However, the addition of religious components to CBT contributed to the initial treatment appeal for religious participants, thus increasing the treatment accessibility.

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Acknowledgements

This work was possible with the financial support of the Romanian Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding (UEFISCDI) Partnerships in Priority Domains Program (PN-II-PT-PCCA-2013), Project No: 331/2014. Bogdan Tudor Tulbure is the Principal Investigator for this grant, while Nastasia Salagean is a team member. The funder had no role in study design, data collection/analysis, decision to publish, or manuscript preparation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, West University of Timişoara, Bd. V. Pârvan No. 4, 300223, Timişoara, Romania

    Bogdan Tudor Tulbure & Nastasia Sălăgean

  2. Department of Behavioral Sciences and Learning, Linköping University, 581 83, Linköping, Sweden

    Gerhard Andersson

  3. Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

    Gerhard Andersson

  4. School of Medicine, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Michelle Pearce

  5. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA

    Harold G. Koenig

  6. Department of Medicine, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

    Harold G. Koenig

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  1. Bogdan Tudor Tulbure
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  2. Gerhard Andersson
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  3. Nastasia Sălăgean
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  4. Michelle Pearce
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Correspondence to Bogdan Tudor Tulbure.

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Tulbure, B.T., Andersson, G., Sălăgean, N. et al. Religious versus Conventional Internet-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Depression. J Relig Health 57, 1634–1648 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-017-0503-0

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