January 07, 2005
Treatment of Anxiety & Depression on the Internet
PsychNotes reviews a recent article from Current Opinion in Psychiatry that evaluates CBT treatment of anxiety disorders via the Internet. Results suggest that "while there are only a few promising published studies on the use of the Internet in the treatment of anxiety disorders, there is additional research in progress that gives preliminary support for the use of the Internet in managing anxiety, and in particular panic disorder.
In a related study published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, researchers from the Centre for Mental Health Research, The Australian National University, compared anxiety and depression outcomes for spontaneous visitors to a publicly accessible cognitive behavior therapy website (MoodGYM) with outcomes achieved through a randomized controlled efficacy trial of the same site.
Interestingly enough, this study found that public registrants did not differ from trial participants in gender, age, or initial level of depression and there were no significant differences in anxiety or depression change scores observed, with both public registrants and trial participants improving through the training program. The authors concluded that public registrants to a cognitive behavior therapy website show significant change in anxiety and depression symptoms. The extent of change does not differ from that exhibited by participants enrolled on the website for a randomized controlled trial.