Significant gains from computer-based depression treatment

Computer-based cognitive behavioral therapy was found to be significantly effective in treating depression in adults. (Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels) - A new international collaborative study, involving multiple institutions including Western University, has found computer-based cognitive behavioural therapy (CCBT) has significantly greater impact in treating depression among adults than treatment as usual (TAU). The study, published in JAMA Network Open , involved a clinical trial of 175 adult patients in the U.S., of which the majority (61.5 per cent) are in the low-income category, with low educational attainment and limited access to the internet - a relatively deprived and underrepresented segment in clinical trials, study co-author Shehzad Ali, professor at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry, said. Nearly 85 per cent of participants also identified as belonging to racial and ethnic minority groups. "The remission rate with CCBT was actually double the treatment-as-usual rate, which is the comparator arm, which is not what we expected," Ali said. "We did not expect that this particular patient population would respond as well as they did." The randomized clinical trial included adult primary care patients from the University of Louisville in Kentucky, who scored 10 or greater on the patient health questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), a screening tool used by health-care professionals to measure the severity of depression in patients. Participants were randomly assigned to CCBT or TAU for 12 weeks of active treatment.