I wrote an initial post yesterday on the very interesting recent Lancet paper "Cognitive behavioural therapy as an adjunct to pharmacotherapy for primary care based patients with treatment resistant depression: Results of the CoBalT randomised controlled trial".  In today's post I want to give a little more context to this trial and a bit more detail about the patients treated and the treatment used.

So we're past yesterday's workshops and into the first day of the conference proper.  Two and a half days now involving about 51 symposia, 5 panel debates, 8 open paper sessions, 2 poster sessions, and 17 keynote addresses.  I really like this Exeter campus with it's trees and little paths.  Easy to get lost, but lovely.  I also really like the many casual conversations - in coffee queues, at breakfast, with whoever's sitting beside you in a lecture.  Lots of interactions.  The conference attenders are almost universally friendly and easy to strike up chats with.  We all have the shared interest of psychotherapy, so it's very straightforward to hit the ground running when talking to complete strangers.  At the same time, I sometimes find these conferences quite lonely - great for social integration, not so great for social intima