According to a study published in The Lancet Psychiatry, the first author Helen Christensen of the University of New South Wales in Australia, a Automated online intervention could be reduce depressive symptoms In adults with insomnia.
“The appearance of major depressive disorders is preventable in 25% of cases with cognitive-behavioral therapy” begins the researcher, remembering that the prevention of depression is demanding. “In most cases, the symptoms begin in young people who do not know they are at risk, with causal dynamics little known and not associated with any specific biomedical or psychosocial markers” resumes the author, specifying that access to cognitive-behavioral therapy is often difficult.
“Nonetheless, considering the high coexistence of depression and insomnia, a way to promptly diagnose the depressive symptoms could be to treat insomnia” explain the authors, who have verified if an online car help program for insomnia were able to improve, in addition to rest, also depression.
The online program is called Shuti, (Sleep Healthy Using the Internet), an automated system of Cognitive-behavioral therapy OnlinAnd to help the sleepless ones, and the authors tested him for six weeks out of over 1,100 Australian adults who in addition to insomnia also had depressive symptoms without reaching greater depression.
To improve sleep, Shauti uses cognitive-behavioral therapy techniques in a completely automatic way, inviting patients to avoid reading and watching TV in the bedroom, not to crush afternoon peas and modifying convictions and unnecessary thoughts such as worries about the consequences of poor night rest.
“About half of the participants completed the study, and the results emerge an improvement in depressive symptoms,” concludes the researchers.
And in an editorial Ricardo Munoz of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco, writes: “Shauti and similar interventions could open the way for low-cost global strategies, available to anyone in the world has access to the net, with cost-benefit results that are difficult to equal from any alternative that exist today”.
