According to the latest research conducted by American scientists, counseling based on the phone may offer long-term benefits to patients suffering depression.
The research was published in the April issue of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. It discovered that when patients received a short telephone-based psychotherapy shortly after they began to take antidepressant medications, serious positive effects - including improvements in their symptoms of depression and satisfaction with their care - continued for up to eighteen months after the first telephone session.
"With nearly four hundred patients, this is the greatest research yet of psychotherapy delivered by means of the telephone. It is also the first research to analyze the efficacy of combining therapy based on the phone with antidepressant medication treatment as provided in everyday medical practice," lead author Evette J. Ludman, a senior research associate at Group Health Centre for Health Studies in Seattle, explained in a prepared statement.
In the course of the phone sessions, psychoanalysts encouraged people to recognize and counter their negative thoughts (cognitive behavioral therapy), to engage in activities they used to enjoy in the past (behavioral activation), and to develop a plan in order to take care for themselves.
Better than regular care
At 18 months after the first therapy, 77 percent of the people who received phone-based therapy observed that their depression was "much" or "very much" better, in comparison to 63 per cent of individuals who received regular care.
The optimistic effects of the phone therapy were more pronounced in people experiencing moderate to severe depression than in those with mild depression.
Moreover, the research discovered that patients who received phone-based therapy had a little better adherence in taking their antidepressant drugs, however that did not represent most of their improvement, the scientists explained.
They plan additional studies, together with a comparison of phone-based and face-to-face counseling.
