Cognition and Therapy

Abstract

To the Editor.— Simons et al should be congratulated for their painstaking study of cognitive changes in psychiatric treatment.¹ Their finding confirms the results of other studies that demonstrated cognitive changes in patients treated with cognitive therapy and also with chemotherapy.^2,3 A study by Rush et al² showed cognitive change in both cognitive therapy—treated and drug-treated groups, but the cognitive therapy group showed more cognitive change and more clinical improvement. Thus, cognitive change irrespective of the form of treatment was correlated with clinical improvement (as in the study by Simons et al¹). Starting from the simple assumption that cognitive therapy, but not pharmacotherapy, would effect cognitive change, Simons et al confirmed a more sophisticated notion, namely, that all of the systems (ie, cognitive, neurochemical, etc) are interrelated; thus, changes in one system affect the other systems.¹ Another way of looking at their findings is that