Cognitive therapy is gaining popularity in the treatment of many other disorders as well.At the 1998 Stanford psycho-pharmacology conference, Dr.Agras is a renowned expert in eating disorders such as binge eating, anorexia nervosa, and bulimia. He presented the results of numerous recent studies on the treatment of eating disorders with antidepressant medication versus psychotherapy. These studies indicated that cognitive behavior therapy is the most effective treatment for eating disorders better than any known drug or any other form of psychotherapy.
One important discovery is the self-help seems to be a key to recovery whether or not yo receive treatment. In a series of five remarkable studies published in the prestigious journal of consulting and clinical psychology and in the gerontologist, Dr.forest Scogin and his colleagues at the university of Alabama studied the effects of simply reading a good self-help book Without any other therapy. The name of this new type of treatment is "bibliotherapy" (reading therapy). They discovered that any good knowledge about mantle health bibliotherapy may be as effective as full course of psychotherapy or treatment with the best antidepressant drug. Given the tremendous pressures to cut health care costs, this of considerable interest, since a paperback copy of any good mood therapy book costs less than two Prozac pills and is presumably free of any troublesome side effects!
In a recent study, Dr.Scogin and his colleague, Dr. Christine Jamison randomly assigned eighty individual seeking treatment for a major depressive episode to one of two groups.the researchers gave the patients in the first group a copy of MOOD therapy book like feelings good by David D.Burns and encouraged them to read it within four weeks. This group was called the immediate bibliotherapy group. These patients also received a booklet containing blank copies of the self-help forms in the book in case they decide to do some of the suggested exercises in the book. Patients in the second group were told they would be placed in a four-week waiting list before beginning treatment.this group was called the delayed bibliotherapy group because these patients were not given a copy of mood therapy book until the second four weeks of the study. The patients in the delayed bibliotherapy group served as a control group to make sure that any improvement in the immediate bibliographer was no just due to the passage of time.
At the initial evaluation, the researchers administered two depression testes at all the patients.One was the beck depression inventory (BDI), a time honored self-assessment test that patients fill out on their own, and the second was the Hamilton rating scale for depression (HRSD), which is administered by trained depression researchers. There was no difference in the depression levels in the two groups at the initial evaluation. You can also see that the average scores for the patients in the immediate bibliotherapy group and the delayed bibliotherapy group at the initial evaluation were both around 20 or above on the BDI and on the HRSD.
These scores indicate that the depression levels in both groups were similar to the depression levels in most published studies of antidepressant or psychotherapy.In fact, the BDI score was nearly identical to the average BDI scores of approximately five hundred patients seeking treatment at David.D.Burns clinic in Philadelphia during the late 1980os.
Every week a research assistant called the patients in booth groups and administered the BDI by telephone.the assistant also answered any question patients had about the study and encouraged the patients in the immediate bibliotherapy group to try to complete the book within four weeks, these calls were limited to ten minutes and no counseling was offered.At the end of the four weeks the two groups were compared. You can see in this figure bellow that the patients in the immediate bibliotheropy group improve considerably. In face the average scores on both the BDI and HRSD were around 10 or below, scores in the range considered normal.
the patients on the immediate bibliotherpy group at top chart received self-help antidepressant book at he intake evaluation.the patients in the delayed bibliotherapy group at bottom chart received self-help book at the four-week evaluation.
BDI-beck depression inventory.
HRSD-hamilton rating scat for depression.
Blogger Comment
Facebook Comment