Researchers through a recently conducted study have found that medical literatures have overstated the benefits of talk therapy for depression, because studies with poor results have rarely made it into journals.

This recent analysis is the first effort to account for studies that do not get published in the journals. Treatments like cognitive behavior therapy and interpersonal therapy are indeed effective, the analysis found.

Depression is one of the most common mental disorders in the USA, with major depressive disorder (MDD) affecting around 6.7% of adults. Once the study's findings were revealed, it was used by critics of antidepressants to suggest that people with depression should avoid drug treatment.

Steven Hollon, a professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University and an author of the study said both talk therapy and antidepressant drugs are efficacious.

Researchers found that the apparent effectiveness was inflated by publication bias. This sort of bias occurs when studies finding that a treatment works are more likely to be published than those with negative findings.

Five million to six million Americans receive psychotherapy for depression each year, and many of them also take antidepressant drugs, surveys find. Most people find some relief by simply consulting a doctor regularly about the problem, experts said.

It was found that psychotherapy (including cognitive behavior, interpersonal, and others) are about 25% less effective than published data (and practitioners) might lead you to believe.

Dr. Erick Turner, an associate professor of psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University and the lead author, said, "That seems to be the magic number, a quarter - about the same as you see in the pharma trials of antidepressants".