Behavioral Activation Could Treat Depression

Depression is a mental disorder that hangs above the patient like a dark cloud. Fortunately, various treatment options are available, including therapy and medication.

According to a recent study, behavioral activation is a simple therapy that has been proven efficient and affordable for people looking to treat their depression.

Oftentimes, depression treatments are either too expensive or there are too few qualified therapists to sustain the growing number of patients in the U.S. The new study found that people can access something cheaper than the gold standard treatment and still find a cure.

At the moment, the most recommended type of treatment for depression is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). As explained by study author David Richards, a professor of mental health services research at the University of Exeter in the UK, CBT is a treatment that looks to analyze the depression from the inside out.

While cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on the way people think, behavioral activation is a therapy from the outside in, one that wants to help people who struggle with depression change the way they act.

The premise of this kind of depression treatment suggests that people’s mood and behavior are tightly connected and that depression can be battled by encouraging the patient to increase engagement in the activities they find most meaningful.

At the same time, people fighting depression are also urged to reduce the behaviors that may cause them isolation, which can worsen the condition.

Beyond the fact that the behavioral activation was found efficient in patients, the study’s authors also highlighted the fact that practicing it on a wide scale could lower healthcare costs without reducing the quality of treatment.

The use of behavioral activation could improve the patients’ access to talk therapy treatment (the main feature of CBT), while also reducing long waiting lists.

Behavioral activation treatment is a less complex depression treatment that costs significantly less than CBT – $1,277 and $1,618 per person on average, respectively. According to the study, this is a 20 percent in the cost of savings.

It’s also easier to train people to deliver this type of therapy. However, that doesn’t mean that behavioral activation therapy should replace CBT. Instead, the study suggests that more people with depression could be treated if health workers are trained to deliver it.

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Nancy Young

When I was younger I used to spend almost all of my free time playing computer games. My mom and dad would go mental over this. “You’re never going to do anything with your life if you are going to play games all day” they used to say. What was even more unusual was the fact that I played more games than most of the guys in my friend group. Looking back, I have to admit that I probably played a bit too much, but I also learned a lot of great things. When I turned 20 I decided that it was high-time to make some money of my own, but the only jobs I could get were that of waitress or cashier. How exciting. After several excruciating months of serving tables I had a great idea: since I love gaming so much, why don’t I write about it? That’s when I started doing small writing projects on Elance. Eventually, I got an offer for a part-time job. During that time I learned all about content marketing strategies and how search engines work. I started writing about various topics such as technology, health and lifestyle and discovered that I was actually good at it. On November 24, 2014, I became part of the ArgyllFreePress team.