Teletherapy Versus In-Person Psychotherapy for Depression: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

Introduction: The recent surge in telehealth service delivery represents a promising development in the field's ability to address access gaps in health care across underserved populations. Telehealth also carries the potential to help reduce the societal burden of mental illnesses such as major depression, which often go untreated. There is now a sufficiently large corpus of randomized controlled trials to examine the comparative effectiveness of teletherapy and in-person services meta-analytically. Methods: We searched the PubMed, PsycINFO, and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) databases for articles from January 1, 2000 to February 1, 2021 to identify randomized head-to-head trials of video-based versus in-person delivery of psychotherapy to reduce depressive symptoms. We conducted a random-effects meta-analysis to evaluate potential differences in efficacy rates. We calculated and meta-analyzed odds ratios to examine differential attrition rates between video and in-person conditions. Finally, we conducted subgroup analyses based on the primary treatment focus (depression or another condition) of each trial. Results: Primary study analyses yielded evidence that video-based psychotherapy is roughly comparable in efficacy with in-person psychotherapy for reducing depressive symptoms (g = 0.04, 95% confidence interval CI = −0.12 to 0.20, p = 0.60, I2 = 5%). Likewise, attrition rates between the two conditions were not significantly different (odds ratio = 1.07, 95% CI = 0.78 to 1.49, p = 0.63, I2 = 25%). Finally, we did not observe significant subgroup differences in either efficacy (p = 0.38) or attrition (p = 0.94). Conclusions: The present findings suggest that video-based teletherapy may be a feasible and effective alternative to in-person services for reducing depressive symptoms. Continued research on the effectiveness of telehealth in clinically depressed samples, and further elucidation of the access barriers entailed by each delivery modality, can help the field better determine which patients will derive the greatest benefit from each mode of intervention.