Just Another Reason To Stay Home If You’re Depressed
Posted by: Ami Angelowicz
Filed in:
news
3:30PM, Monday August 24th 2009
If you’ve ever experienced anxiety or depression, you know the appeal of simply staying home and hiding in your bed forever. Sounds kind of dangerous right? Maybe not. Scientists in the UK were trying to come up with alternative ways—other than flippantly prescribing meds—to treat anxious and depressed patients, who often have to wait over a year to visit a shrink. And they came up with the idea of virtual therapy—essentially, IMing a shrink. Turns out, it’s just as effective if not more so than actual talk therapy. The study looked at 297 people, half of whom had 10 sessions of therapy, each lasting about an hour, where they used instant messaging to chat one-on-one with a trained therapist. The results? About four in 10 people who had online therapy improved to the point where they were no longer depressed. Only two in 10 people recovered without any therapy.
Why would this be the case? Maybe it’s easier to write about your problems than to talk about them. That, and you don’t see someone taking secret notes about your dysfunction on an oversized yellow pad. With online therapy, what you say is saved, so your time of darkness is memorialized forever and a therapist can go back and re-read discussions. Ditto for you. [The Guardian]
So let me get this straight. You are depressed or anxious. You stay at home; recline on your bed, and IM about your problems with a person you’ve never met? Hmmm ... sounds a lot like online dating. I think I’m just an “in-person” type. I think I’ll stick with the couch and the legal pads, thank you very much.
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Pinky
wrote on August 24 2009 @ 02:36 pm: [report]
” who often have to wait over a year to visit a shrink.”
hmmmm…could it be the dreaded socialized medicine ...that many want us Americans to now be subjected to ...no wonder the Brits are depressed.
Riley
wrote on August 24 2009 @ 02:50 pm: [report]
Oooohhhh Pinky you went there! Get ready for the Obamabots to descend upon you! You’ll probably just be ridiculed for being a Republican even if you aren’t.
On topic, I think a lot of people are more comfortable airing more intimate details of their lives when they don’t have to actually face the person.
Whether that is actually healthy or not is the larger question. Does it push them further into anti-social activity by detaching them from human interaction? I don’t think it helps you grow by allowing you to push further into solitude.
strangeasangels
wrote on August 24 2009 @ 03:42 pm: [report]
It’s not much quicker to get a therapist in the US. If you’re high-risk you’ll get someone quickly but they’ll be decidedly terrible and underqualified, probably just a social worker. It’s also much more expensive to get a real therapist. Don’t even get me started on psychiatrists.
B
wrote on August 24 2009 @ 04:37 pm: [report]
I agree w/ Riley about the possibility it eases further seclusion, but also see how it could benefit some people. Fact is we’re all different and what works for one person might not work for another.
skywalk
wrote on August 25 2009 @ 06:13 am: [report]
Riley, that is a great point, but I do agree with B, what works for one may not work for another so it should be an option. Interesting enough I love to socialize I can talk and talk and talk when you get me in a social environment (or anywhere for that matter), but I hate the phone. I barely talk on the phone unless it is work related and then I use email as much as possible. Even as a teenager I was rarely on the phone unless it was a guy I liked, my other friends were on the phone with each other all the time. Where I going with this? I’m a texter, an e-mailer and a socializer all in one but don’t try and get me to use a phone so I don’t think I’m anti social at all. But with my busy schedule, a 40+ hr a week job, two businesses (a bar & construction business), and real-estate (ie. Tenants), texting therapy would work perfect for me, I wouldn’t have time to go to a therapy session if needed. But I do agree with some people who already have problems being social or being around people in general this wouldn’t be the best option.
CompleteCounseling
wrote on August 25 2009 @ 06:25 am: [report]
Hey
Don’t usually post comments, but saw this article and just had to give my thoughts. This post is suggesting that online therapy is a place where its dark and dank and not very effective. I own and operate an online counseling site and we are very interactive with our clients. We offer webcam therapy as well as text and email therapy so if you want to see your therapist and still stay at home, you can or if you are more into typing, than you can do that too. As far as recording sessions, we do not record sessions and that would be unethical in my opinion without prior consent. Online therapy is a great way to receive therapy especially if you cannot get to a therapist’s office or don’t even want too.
Dr. Jennifer Lagrotte,DMFT
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
http://www.completecounselingsolutions.com
joyy
wrote on August 25 2009 @ 08:59 am: [report]
This is just the continuation of a recent trend: using technology to expand access to healthcare. My employer uses videoconferencing to bring therapy to clients in very, very rural areas. It seems odd at first, but we’ve actually got 10 years of customer satisfaction data showing that many people are just as comfortable videoconferencing their therapy as they are doing it face to face.
Then more recently, therapy over the phone became more accepted (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/the-benefits-of-therapy-by-phone/). Why? Because sometimes existing patients needed to talk between appointments and weren’t able (for whatever reason) to schedule an additional in-house appointment. And some people just start therapy from the get go over the phone. What they found with this is that it is just as effective, but moreso because the attrition (drop-out) rate is much, much lower.
I would worry about things like tone of voice, etc getting lost in the conversation (who hasn’t sent emails or IMs that we thought were very clear but sent very different messages than we intended?), but if continuing to use different technologies increases access to treatment and keeps people in long enough to improve, then that’s a good thing in my book. Maybe not the right thing for everyone, but I am happy to see it being used.