%D 2016
%R 10.1192/bjp.bp.115.179275
%O PMID: 27810891
%J The British Journal of Psychiatry
%I The Royal College of Psychiatrists
%T (Review article) Sponsorship bias in the comparative efficacy of psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy for adult depression: meta-analysis
%L eprints3603
%A Ioana A. Cristea
%A Claudio Gentili
%A Pietro Pietrini
%A Pim Cuijpers
%X Background:Sponsorship bias has never been investigated for non-pharmacological treatments like psychotherapy.AimsWe examined industry funding and author financial conflict of interest (COI) in randomised controlled trials directly comparing psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy in depression.Method: We conducted a meta-analysis with subgroup comparisons for industry v. non-industry-funded trials, and respectively for trial reports with author financial COI v. those without.Results: In total, 45 studies were included. In most analyses, pharmacotherapy consistently showed significant effectiveness over psychotherapy, g = -0.11 (95% CI -0.21 to -0.02) in industry-funded trials. Differences between industry and non-industry-funded trials were significant, a result only partly confirmed in sensitivity analyses. We identified five instances where authors of the original article had not reported financial COI.ConclusionsIndustry-funded trials for depression appear to subtly favour pharmacotherapy over psychotherapy. Disclosure of all financial ties with the pharmaceutical industry should be encouraged.