Moodgym
by Meryl

Online treatment for depression
with Dr Norman Swan

A trial of online therapy has shown benefits for people with
depression at almost no cost.

It is said that 30,000 Australians with depression don’t receive
adequate help and one effective form of treatment is cognitive
behavioural therapy - CBT. CBT tries to make a person’s thinking more
realistic, when they might be stuck in a black hole feeling that
everything is hopeless, especially them. But CBT isn’t always
accessible or cheap. So the Centre for Mental Health Research at the
Australian National University developed an Internet based CBT called
'Moodgym', and have made it available free to the general public. They
have also created another website called 'Bluepages' that just gives
information about depression and they did a trial comparing each of
those sites to a placebo. Confidentiality wasn’t a problem since
people don’t have to use their real names.

Both Moodgym and Bluepages reduced depression significantly – and
Moodgym was almost as good as seeing a real therapist. Tens of
thousands of people have used the site and while they have paid
nothing, the Centre believes that a full course actually costs all of
2 cents. Not bad value.

Check out moodgym at http://moodgym.anu.edu.au/ we at the black dog have and find it most interesting!

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