How effective are pharmaceutical or therapeutic treatments for jealousy? This is the last of a series of questions I've posted about jealousy (see here, here, and here).


What pharmaceutical and therapeutic treatments, if any, have been developed for managing acute jealousy 
How effective are these treatments?
Pharmaceutical:
Well, I can tell you there are no pharmaceutical treatments you can take that JUST help you manage &quot;acute jealousy.&quot;  Essentially, any drug you would take that may help wouldn't just target &quot;jealousy.&quot;  If there even is one that helps you to manage it it will have a global effect and probably be something like an SSRI, SNRI, amphetamine, some other drug that is probably going to end up making you feel worse in the long run.
Pharmaceutical wise, I really just found one study that referenced it at all and it's not very helpful.  Scroll down though, the CBT part is very encouraging.
Because this is such a specific topic really the only thing I found in relation to pharmaceuticals and jealousy was...if you have parkinson's and you are taking dopamine agonists, you can get &quot;delusional jealousy&quot;.  So I'd avoid dopamine agonists...maybe?  But you probably don't have parkinson's.  It could be extrapolated to the general population to just say &quot;hey, dopamine agonists may cause 'delusional jealousy'&quot; but that's unlikely - and kind of useless information.  MAYBE you could try a dopamine antagonist (antipsychotic) but those things SUCK so much - just trust me it's not worth it...in fact it's a stupid idea to bring up.

Mov Disord. 2012 Nov;27(13):1679-82. doi: 10.1002/mds.25129. Epub 2012
Nov 13.
Dopamine agonists and delusional jealousy in Parkinson's disease: a
cross-sectional prevalence study.
Poletti M, Perugi G, Logi C, Romano A, Del Dotto P, Ceravolo R, Rossi
G, Pepe P,  Dell'Osso L, Bonuccelli U.
Department of Neuroscience, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
BACKGROUND: Delusional jealousy (DJ) has been described in patients
with Parkinson's disease (PD) on dopaminergic therapy, but a role for
dopaminergic therapy in DJ has not been established. METHODS: The
current cross-sectional study on DJ investigated its association with
dopaminergic therapies compared with their associations with
hallucinations  and its prevalence in PD patients. Eight hundred five
consecutive patients with PD were enrolled between January 2009 and
June 2010. RESULTS: DJ was identified in 20 patients (2.48%) and
hallucinations in 193 patients (23.98%). In the multivariate logistic
regression analyses, dopamine agonists were significantly associated
with DJ (odds ratio, 18.1; 95% CI,
3.0-infinity; P = .0002) but not with hallucinations (odds ratio, 0.73; 95% CI,
0.49-1.10; P = .133). CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that dopamine agonist treatment represents a  risk factor for DJ in PD
independent of the presence of a dementing disorder, and the presence
of this additional nonmotor side effect should be investigated in this
clinical population.
Copyright © 2012 Movement Disorder Society.
PMID: 23150469  [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Edit
Now this was an interesting mini-study I came across along with a whole bunch of other results with the word &quot;pathological jealousy.&quot;

J Clin Psychiatry. 1990 Aug;51(8):345-6. Successful fluoxetine
treatment of pathologic jealousy. Lane RD. Source Department of
Psychiatry, University of Health Sciences, Chicago Medical School,
Ill. Abstract A 39-year-old man suddenly became convinced that his
wife had once been unfaithful to him, and soon thereafter he became
depressed. Symptoms of depression responded to imipramine, but the
jealousy did not. A trial of fluoxetine was attempted because of the
obsessional nature of the jealousy. Fluoxetine 60 mg/day resulted in
complete remission of the pathologic jealousy, consistent with the
known efficacy of fluoxetine in obsessive compulsive disorder. PMID:
2380161 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

However, once again, I'm sure that's not the only affect he experienced.  THere were also a few hits with risperdone and primazone actually.  They didn't even have abstracts tho.
Then we have the implication that it may be involved in OCD:

Aust N Z J Psychiatry. 1997 Feb;31(1):133-8.
Morbid jealousy as a variant of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Parker G, Barrett E.
School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Randwick,
Australia.
OBJECTIVE: To present a representative case vignette and review
several previous  reports, and to then suggest that a percentage of
those with morbid jealousy may  have a variant of obsessive-compulsive
disorder (OCD). CLINICAL PICTURE: A patient presented volunteering a
diagnosis of depression and  anxiety following recent work and marital
stresses, before describing recent jealousy and harassment of his wife
over an earlier relationship. Obsessional thinking patterns and
compulsive behaviours are described, and it is proposed that the
picture supports a diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
TREATMENT AND OUTCOME: The patient was treated as if he had an
obsessive-compulsive disorder, and reported dissipation of his
concerns after cognitive-behavioural intervention. CONCLUSIONS: The
proposition is an important one as a diagnosis of morbid jealousy
often invites therapeutic pessimism, and as managements effective for
OCD (both drug and behavioural) may well be helpful.
PMID: 9088498  [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Which ends with successful treatment with cognitive behavioral therapy as well as (they insinuate) some pharmaceutical treatment having to do with his OCD.
This leads me into my next section though:
Therapeutic
In my opinion:

Jealousy is so specific that said person with jealousy is going to
have to deal with it with something like CBT (although there are several medicines that &gt;could help to treat it...you would probably agree with me that some of their side affects &gt;arn't worth it if one were to try them, said jealous person also has to consider whether &gt;or not their jealousy is &quot;pathological&quot;) - not to sound like a
broken record.  There just isn't anything as proven out there.  Said
jealous person also needs to do things that expands their &quot;options&quot;
which would be the ultimate cure - even if it's just meeting randoms
on plenty of fish, there's not much to lose.  In my opinion, it should
be looked at as just gambling or like a slot machine.  Otherwise, if
said jealous person does not change any of their habits....the pattern
of jealousy will continue.

Now I'm going to give you some (the very rare) CBT studies involving specifically jealousy.  I don't have access to the full text of these, if you do - maybe you want to look into them more.  If you generalize &quot;jealousy&quot; into &quot;depression&quot; then I don't even need to really cite all of the studies that show how much CBT works.

Br J Psychiatry. 1996 May;168(5):588-93.
The effectiveness of cognitive therapy in the treatment of
non-psychotic morbid jealousy.
Dolan M, Bishay N.
Ashworth Hospital, Maghull, Liverpool.
BACKGROUND: Although a cognitive-behavioural formulation of morbid
jealousy has been described there is little empirical research into
the practical usefulness of this model. This study evaluated the
effectiveness of treating non-psychotic morbid jealousy using a
cognitive approach. METHOD: Cognitive-behavioural and emotional
measures of jealousy were calibrated  by comparison with 40
non-jealous normal controls. These instruments were used as measures
of change to assess the effectiveness of cognitive therapy in altering
cognitive errors in 30 morbidly jealous out-patient referrals, divided
into delayed and immediate treatment subgroups to assess the stability
of the condition. Both groups completed all measures immediately
before and after treatment, and at follow-up. RESULTS: The instruments
demonstrated significant differences between jealous and non-jealous
subjects on cognitive-behavioural and emotional aspects of jealousy.
The delayed treatment group showed no significant alteration in scores
on any of  the instruments after 12 weeks on the waiting list,
confirming the stability of the condition. In the majority of cases
cognitive therapy aimed at the modification of dysfunctional cognitive
processes resulted in a significant improvement on all jealousy
measures, immediately after treatment and at follow-up. The
improvement reported by patients was supported by the partner's
ratings. CONCLUSION: The results support the postulation of the
cognitive model that modification of cognitive schema by a
schema-focused treatment package results in a significant reduction in
disturbance in all aspects of the jealousy syndrome.
PMID: 8733797  [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Next:

Br J Psychiatry. 1989 Mar;154:386-9.
An uncontrolled study of cognitive therapy for morbid jealousy.
Bishay NR, Petersen N, Tarrier N.
North Manchester General Hospital, Crumpsall.
Thirteen patients presenting with morbid jealousy were treated using a
cognitive  approach adapted from Beck's cognitive therapy for
depression. Cognitions in morbid jealousy showed the characteristics
of automatic thoughts as described by  Beck, and were based on faulty
assumptions derived from interpretations of past experiences. The
cognitive treatment directed mainly at the faulty assumptions resulted
in improvements in TEN (10 out of 13!) patients and no change in one; two patients
dropped out of treatment. The results are considered encouraging.
PMID: 2597841  [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Once again if one were to just generalize the &quot;jealousy&quot; to depression, then click below.  There's a wide variety of them.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=cognitive+behavioral+therapy+depression