Why We Started

ISIPT was formed in May 2000 at a meeting in Chicago attended by clinicians from The USA, Canada, Great Britain, Iceland, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Luxembourg and other countries.

ISIPT was formed with the goals of:

• Disseminating Interpersonal Psychotherapy as a therapeutic modality
• Promoting Training in Interpersonal Psychotherapy
• Promoting international cooperation in IPT research, training and delivery
• Promoting a dialogue amongst clinicians in order to further evolve IPT in a variety of research and clinical settings
• To establish training and accreditation pathways for IPT

In order to further disseminate information on IPT, the concept of an ISIPT web site was born. By using the Internet, our hope was that we could share information we have on this effective treatment with others. You could help us improve the ISIPT site. Please write to us with your comments and suggestions.

History of IPT

Gerald Klerman and Myrna Weissman           

The story of IPT began in the 1970 at Yale University, when Gerald Klerman, was joined by Eugene Paykel, from London, initiated a study to test the relative efficacy of a tricyclic antidepressant alone and with psychotherapy as maintenance treatment of ambulatory nonbipolar depression. The evidence for the efficacy of tricyclic antidepressants for reducing the acute symptoms of depression was strong, yet the main treatment for depression was psychodynamic psychotherapy. The studies of psychotherapy were with behavioral treatments, and were limited in scope and sample size. A manual for cognitive-behavioral treatment (CBT) was under development by Aaron Beck. It was clear that many patients with depression relapsed after termination of acute tricyclic antidepressant treatment. It was unclear how long psychopharmacologic treatment should continue, and whether psychotherapy had a role in the prevention of relapse.

Gerry Klerman felt that a clinical trial of maintenance tricyclic antidepressants should, as much as possible, mimic clinical practice. Because many patients then received both psychotherapy and drugs, either together or in sequence, he felt that psychotherapy should be included in the maintenance treatment trial, if for nothing more than a milieu effect. He was not convinced that he would find a psychotherapy effect, but he was convinced that psychotherapy could be subjected to testing in a clinical trial. Our job was first to define the type of psychotherapy and specify the procedures to be used. Psychotherapists could be then be trained, and the quality and stability of treatment could be insured. We felt that the psychotherapy should be what made sense in a time-limited treatment of depression. Initially, IPT was called high contact.

These guiding principles governed this early work:

1. Randomized control clinical trials were important for testing and establishing the efficacy of all treatments.



2. A broad range of standardized assessments were needed for measuring outcomes, including quality of life and social functioning.



3. Treatment results needed to be replicated. (Gerry did not develop training programs or make efforts for dissemination of IPT until findings were replicated outside the enthusiastic group of developers).

When the first maintenance study showed the efficacy of "high contact", we began to more fully describe the treatment, termed it interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) and designed an acute treatment trial of drugs and IPT alone and in combination. The positive results of the acute study and particularly the findings that combination of drugs and psychotherapy was the most efficacious treatment led to the NIMH Multisite Collaborative Treatment Study of this treatment of depression, testing drugs, CBT, IPT for acute treatment.

In 1984 with demonstration of efficacy of IPT outside of our research group we published the IPT manual. This publication was followed by numerous other modifications and studies of IPT for depressed adolescents, elderly, pregnant women and HIV positive patient, in recurrent depression. Translation into Japanese, Italian and German were undertaken. Gerry would not have anticipated the great interest in IPT and it's recommendations in several official guidelines in the United States and elsewhere. He died April 3, 1992 before these developments.

In 2000 John Markowitz, Gerry's last trainee and I compiled all the new adaptations studies in IPT, updated the manual and published Comprehensive Guide to Interpersonal Psychotherapy, Basic Book. (Weissman M. M., Markowitz J., Klerman GL). Out of respect for Gerry's extraordinary contribution we were proud to have him as a posthumous author of this book.

Myrna Klerman Weissman
Oct. 10, 2000