Abstract
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the clinical effects of the Activity Scheduling Method on depressive syndrome. The basic assumption comes from Ferster's conceptualization of depression as a low rate of behaviors brought about by a shift in the amount of positive reinforcement available to the person. Activity Scheduling Method aims to prompt the patients to schedule events each day to increase the number of pleasant events and the number of unpleasant events by using the three kinds of checklists, Pleasant Event Scheduling, Unpleasant Event Scheduling and Daily Mood Monitoring. Based on the reciprocal relationships among the results of these checklists, therapist encouraged the patients to increase the pleasant activities and reduce the unpleasant activities. Social Skills Training, Assertive Training and Cognitive Therapy were applied in order to reduce the unpleasant activities. The method were applied on the patients (12 males and 8 females, age 28-65) who were diagnosed as Major Depression or Dysthymic Disorder according to DSM-III, given antidepressants for a considerable period. After the application of the method for 4,-20 weeks, ten patients were assessed to have clinically improved according to rating on DSM-III description. The effectiveness, limitations and some expected modifications of the method were speculated.
