Web-Based Psychotherapy Can Work(ing at different ways of delivering psyc...),Health

Date:8/20/2009

ing at different ways of delivering psychotherapy other than the traditional go-to-the-therapist's-office-and-meet-for-50-minutes," said Dr. Gregory E. Simon, co-author of the commentary and a psychiatrist and researcher with Group Health Cooperative in Seattle. "On the far extreme are completely computerized or completely automated programs that don't have to have a human being involved. On the other end, people may communicate with a therapist through a Web site or telephone but there's a real live therapist there they're communicating with."

For this study, nearly 300 British patients with depression were randomly assigned to receive online CBT or were put on an eight-month waiting list for online CBT while they received usual care from their general practitioner.

The online therapy, which consisted of 10 weekly 55-minute sessions, essentially involved instant messages back and forth. About two-thirds of participants "showed up" for five or more sessions.

After four months of follow-up, 38 percent of patients in the CBT group recovered from depression compared with 24 percent in the control group, the study found.

At eight months, recovery rates were 42 percent in the intervention group and 26 percent in the control group, the researchers found. That's an improvement on recovery rates seen in conventional therapy.

The authors hypothesized that the heightened success rate might be due to the fact that people are writing rather than speaking their feelings and thoughts. "This approach could enhance metacognitive awareness, a term applied to changing the patient's relationship with negative thoughts and feelings, rather than changing their belief in the content of the negative thoughts," they wrote in the report.

Virtual therapy sessions with a real person do not save much in costs (except for gas) and there may be a trade-off in terms of quality of communication. But the real benefits come in access an
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