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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 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.
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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 and convenience, experts said.
"When you make the therapy much more convenient, people will be more likely to stick with it," Simon said. "I don't think anyone would argue that you don't lose something. Communicating in person is richer and communication over phone is richer than just typing text, but balance that with convenience and the person is more likely to stick with it . . . You may be reaching people you wouldn't reach otherwise."
More information
There's more on CBT at the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
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