Dr. Steven Hollon Talk
About the event
Reconceptualizing Depression (Everything I got Wrong about the “Disorder”)
Hollon and his colleagues have shown that the cognitive and behavior therapies are as efficacious as and more enduring than antidepressant medications but emerging evidence suggests that nonpsychotic unipolar depression is neither a disease nor a disorder but rather an adaptation that evolved to solve complex problems. Moreover, the major animal model of depression has been reconceptualized to indicate that what gets learned is resilience rather than helplessness. Serotonin plays a key role in both depression in humans and resilience in animals and is the primary target of most antidepressants, but those medications do not correct the presumed deficit of serotonin in the synapse but rather drive an existing excess so high that underlying homeostatic mechanisms push back to restore equilibrium. This does suppress symptoms but may leave patients in episode and at elevated risk for relapse whenever they try to discontinue. I now think that cognitive therapy works by making rumination more efficient that facilitates the function that depression evolved to serve in which the more highly evolved cortex overrides more primitive brainstem mechanisms.
Steven D. Hollon, Ph.D., is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of Psychology at Vanderbilt University. His research focuses on the nature and treatment of depression with an emphasis on the enduring effects of cognitive and behavioral interventions. He is a former editor of Cognitive Therapy and Research, past president of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) and the Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology (SSCP), and the former chair of the steering committee advising the APA on the development of clinical practice guidelines. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Award for the Application of Psychology from the American Psychological Association (APA) as a whole, as well as awards for Distinguished Scientific and Distinguished Professional Contributions to Clinical Psychology from the Society of Clinical Psychology (Division 12 of APA). He has over 350 publications and has mentored over 20 doctoral and post-doctoral advisees.