Restoring happiness in people with depression

ScienceDaily (July 28, 2011) — Practicing positive activities may serve as an effective, low-cost treatment for people suffering from depression, according to researchers at the University of California, Riverside and Duke University Medical Center.

In "Delivering Happiness: Translating Positive Psychology Intervention Research for Treating Major and Minor Depressive Disorders," a paper that appears in the August 2011 issue of the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, the team of UCR and Duke psychology, neuroscience and psychopharmacology researchers proposed a new approach for treating depression -- Positive Activity Interventions (PAI).

PAIs are intentional activities such as performing acts of kindness, practicing optimism, and counting one's blessing gleaned from decades of research into how happy and unhappy people are different. This new approach has the potential to benefit depressed individuals who don't respond to pharmacotherapy or are not able or willing to obtain treatment, is less expensive to administer, is relatively less time-consuming and promises to yield rapid improvement of mood symptoms, holds little to no stigma, and carries no side effects.

More than 16 million U.S. adults -- about 8 percent of the population -- suffer from either major or chronic depression. About 70 percent of reported cases either do not receive the recommended level of treatment or do not get treated at all, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Globally, the World Health Organization estimates that depression affects more than 100 million people.

Although antidepressants can be lifesaving for some individuals, initial drug therapy produces full benefits in only 30 percent to 40 percent of patients. Even after trying two to four different drugs, one-third of people will remain depressed.

The research team -- Kristin Layous and Joseph Chancellor, graduate students at UC Riverside; Sonja Lyubomirsky, professor of psychology and director of the Positive Psychology Laboratory at UC Riverside; and Lihong Wang, M.D., and P. Murali Doraiswamy, M.B.B.S., FRCP, of Duke University -- conducted a rigorous review of previous studies of PAIs, including randomized, controlled interventions with thousands of normal men and women as well as functional MRI scans in people with depressive symptoms.

"Over the last several decades, social psychology studies of flourishing individuals who are happy, optimistic and grateful have produced a lot of new information about the benefits of positive activity interventions on mood and well-being," Lyubomirsky said.

However, such findings have not yet entered mainstream psychiatric practice.

"Very few psychiatrists collaborate with social scientists and no one in my field ever reads the journals where most happiness studies have been published. It was eye-opening for me as a psychopharmacologist to read this literature," Doraiswamy said.

Lyubomirsky said that after she and Doraiswamy exchanged notes, "the obvious question that popped up was whether we can tap into the PAI research base to design interventions to galvanize clinically depressed people to move past the point of simply not feeling depressed to the point of flourishing."

Although the paper found that positive activity interventions are effective in teaching individuals ways to increase their positive thinking, positive affect and positive behaviors, only two studies specifically tested these activities in individuals with mild depression.

In one of these studies, lasting improvements were found for six months. Effective PAIs used in the study included writing letters of gratitude, counting one's blessings, practicing optimism, performing acts of kindness, meditating on positive feelings toward others, and using one's signature strengths, all of which can be easily implemented into a daily routine at low cost.

People often underestimate the long-term impact of practicing brief, positive activities, Lyubomirsky said. For example, if a person gets 15 minutes of positive emotions from counting her blessings, she may muster the energy to attend the art class she'd long considered attending, and, while in class, might meet a friend who becomes a companion and confidant for years to come. In this way, even momentary positive feelings can build long-term social, psychological, intellectual, and physical skills and reserves.

The researchers' review of brain imaging studies also led them to theorize that PAIs may act to boost the dampened reward/pleasure circuit mechanisms and reverse apathy -- a key benefit that does not usually arise from treatment with medication alone.

"The positive activities themselves aren't really new," said Layous, the paper's lead author. "After all, humans have been counting their blessings, dreaming optimistically, writing thank you notes, and doing acts of kindness for thousands of years. What's new is the scientific rigor that researchers have applied to measuring benefits and understanding why they work."

A major benefit of positive activities is that they are simple to practice and inexpensive to deliver.

"If we're serious about tackling a problem as large as depression, we should be as concerned about the scalability of our solutions as much as their potency," Chancellor said,

While PAIs appear to be a potentially promising therapy for mild forms of depression," Doraiswamy cautioned, "they have not yet been fully studied in people with moderate to severe forms of depression. We need further studies before they can be applied to help such patients."

Kim Jobst, a physician and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Alternative and Complimentary Medicine, said the review provides one location in which to reference all relevant PAI findings to date, and includes recommendations that should prove useful to researchers, clinicians and the public. The journal is devoted to publishing research about novel and unconventional treatment approaches.

The research was supported by the authors themselves. Lyubomirsky's research has been funded by a Templeton Positive Psychology Prize and the National Institute of Mental Health. Doraiswamy has received research grants from NIMH and served as an advisor/investigator to several pharmaceutical companies.

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by University of California - Riverside.

Journal Reference:

Kristin Layous, Joseph Chancellor, Sonja Lyubomirsky, Lihong Wang, P. Murali Doraiswamy. Delivering Happiness: Translating Positive Psychology Intervention Research for Treating Major and Minor Depressive Disorders. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 2011; 17 (8): 675 DOI: 10.1089/acm.2011.0139

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

View the original article here

Restoring happiness in people with depression

ScienceDaily (July 28, 2011) — Practicing positive activities may serve as an effective, low-cost treatment for people suffering from depression, according to researchers at the University of California, Riverside and Duke University Medical Center.

In "Delivering Happiness: Translating Positive Psychology Intervention Research for Treating Major and Minor Depressive Disorders," a paper that appears in the August 2011 issue of the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, the team of UCR and Duke psychology, neuroscience and psychopharmacology researchers proposed a new approach for treating depression -- Positive Activity Interventions (PAI).

PAIs are intentional activities such as performing acts of kindness, practicing optimism, and counting one's blessing gleaned from decades of research into how happy and unhappy people are different. This new approach has the potential to benefit depressed individuals who don't respond to pharmacotherapy or are not able or willing to obtain treatment, is less expensive to administer, is relatively less time-consuming and promises to yield rapid improvement of mood symptoms, holds little to no stigma, and carries no side effects.

More than 16 million U.S. adults -- about 8 percent of the population -- suffer from either major or chronic depression. About 70 percent of reported cases either do not receive the recommended level of treatment or do not get treated at all, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Globally, the World Health Organization estimates that depression affects more than 100 million people.

Although antidepressants can be lifesaving for some individuals, initial drug therapy produces full benefits in only 30 percent to 40 percent of patients. Even after trying two to four different drugs, one-third of people will remain depressed.

The research team -- Kristin Layous and Joseph Chancellor, graduate students at UC Riverside; Sonja Lyubomirsky, professor of psychology and director of the Positive Psychology Laboratory at UC Riverside; and Lihong Wang, M.D., and P. Murali Doraiswamy, M.B.B.S., FRCP, of Duke University -- conducted a rigorous review of previous studies of PAIs, including randomized, controlled interventions with thousands of normal men and women as well as functional MRI scans in people with depressive symptoms.

"Over the last several decades, social psychology studies of flourishing individuals who are happy, optimistic and grateful have produced a lot of new information about the benefits of positive activity interventions on mood and well-being," Lyubomirsky said.

However, such findings have not yet entered mainstream psychiatric practice.

"Very few psychiatrists collaborate with social scientists and no one in my field ever reads the journals where most happiness studies have been published. It was eye-opening for me as a psychopharmacologist to read this literature," Doraiswamy said.

Lyubomirsky said that after she and Doraiswamy exchanged notes, "the obvious question that popped up was whether we can tap into the PAI research base to design interventions to galvanize clinically depressed people to move past the point of simply not feeling depressed to the point of flourishing."

Although the paper found that positive activity interventions are effective in teaching individuals ways to increase their positive thinking, positive affect and positive behaviors, only two studies specifically tested these activities in individuals with mild depression.

In one of these studies, lasting improvements were found for six months. Effective PAIs used in the study included writing letters of gratitude, counting one's blessings, practicing optimism, performing acts of kindness, meditating on positive feelings toward others, and using one's signature strengths, all of which can be easily implemented into a daily routine at low cost.

People often underestimate the long-term impact of practicing brief, positive activities, Lyubomirsky said. For example, if a person gets 15 minutes of positive emotions from counting her blessings, she may muster the energy to attend the art class she'd long considered attending, and, while in class, might meet a friend who becomes a companion and confidant for years to come. In this way, even momentary positive feelings can build long-term social, psychological, intellectual, and physical skills and reserves.

The researchers' review of brain imaging studies also led them to theorize that PAIs may act to boost the dampened reward/pleasure circuit mechanisms and reverse apathy -- a key benefit that does not usually arise from treatment with medication alone.

"The positive activities themselves aren't really new," said Layous, the paper's lead author. "After all, humans have been counting their blessings, dreaming optimistically, writing thank you notes, and doing acts of kindness for thousands of years. What's new is the scientific rigor that researchers have applied to measuring benefits and understanding why they work."

A major benefit of positive activities is that they are simple to practice and inexpensive to deliver.

"If we're serious about tackling a problem as large as depression, we should be as concerned about the scalability of our solutions as much as their potency," Chancellor said,

While PAIs appear to be a potentially promising therapy for mild forms of depression," Doraiswamy cautioned, "they have not yet been fully studied in people with moderate to severe forms of depression. We need further studies before they can be applied to help such patients."

Kim Jobst, a physician and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Alternative and Complimentary Medicine, said the review provides one location in which to reference all relevant PAI findings to date, and includes recommendations that should prove useful to researchers, clinicians and the public. The journal is devoted to publishing research about novel and unconventional treatment approaches.

The research was supported by the authors themselves. Lyubomirsky's research has been funded by a Templeton Positive Psychology Prize and the National Institute of Mental Health. Doraiswamy has received research grants from NIMH and served as an advisor/investigator to several pharmaceutical companies.

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by University of California - Riverside.

Journal Reference:

Kristin Layous, Joseph Chancellor, Sonja Lyubomirsky, Lihong Wang, P. Murali Doraiswamy. Delivering Happiness: Translating Positive Psychology Intervention Research for Treating Major and Minor Depressive Disorders. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 2011; 17 (8): 675 DOI: 10.1089/acm.2011.0139

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

View the original article here

New therapy may help people with unexplained symptoms of pain, weakness and fatigue

ScienceDaily (July 28, 2011) — A new type of therapy may help people with symptoms such as pain, weakness, or dizziness that can't be explained by an underlying disease, according to a study published in the July 27, 2011, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. These symptoms, which can also include fatigue, tingling and numbness, are also known as functional or psychogenic symptoms.

"People with these symptoms make up one-third of all clinic visits, but the outcomes are poor," said study author Michael Sharpe, MD, of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Previous studies have shown that intense cognitive behavioral therapy can reduce the symptoms, distress and disability in people with these symptoms, but there are obstacles to providing this therapy. Many people do not feel psychological treatment is appropriate and resist referrals to mental health services, and therapists trained in cognitive behavioral therapy are not available in all communities.

Cognitive behavioral therapy aims to improve people's physical symptoms, emotional state and functioning by helping them to understand, and where necessary change, how they think about and respond to their symptoms and life situation.

For the study, the researchers developed a self-help workbook especially for patients with physical symptoms that was based on the therapy. A total of 62 people were given the workbook and over three months had up to four half-hour hour sessions guiding them in the use of the book with a nurse at their neurologist's office in addition to their usual medical care. They were compared to 63 people who received only their usual medical care. Most of the participants also had psychiatric diagnoses, such as panic disorder, anxiety disorder and depression.

After three months, the people who received the extra therapy were approximately twice as likely to report improvements in their overall health as those who did not receive the extra therapy. A total of 13 percent more people who received the extra therapy reported that their health was "better" or "much better" than those who received only their usual care.

After six months, there was no longer a significant difference in improvements in overall health between the two groups. However, those receiving the extra therapy continued to have greater improvement in their symptoms than those who received the usual care and also in their physical functioning. They were also more satisfied with their treatment.

"This study suggests that cognitive behavioral therapy-based guided self-help may be a new and potentially useful first step in improving the management of these challenging symptoms," Sharpe said. "This approach needs further evaluation but can be a potentially effective and cost-effective first step toward providing more help for these often neglected patients."

The study was supported by the United Kingdom Medical Research Council.

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by American Academy of Neurology.

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

View the original article here

'Brain cap' technology turns thought into motion; Mind-machine interface could lead to new life-changing technologies for millions of people

ScienceDaily (July 29, 2011) — "Brain cap" technology being developed at the University of Maryland allows users to turn their thoughts into motion. Associate Professor of Kinesiology José 'Pepe' L. Contreras-Vidal and his team have created a non-invasive, sensor-lined cap with neural interface software that soon could be used to control computers, robotic prosthetic limbs, motorized wheelchairs and even digital avatars.

"We are on track to develop, test and make available to the public- within the next few years -- a safe, reliable, noninvasive brain computer interface that can bring life-changing technology to millions of people whose ability to move has been diminished due to paralysis, stroke or other injury or illness," said Contreras-Vidal of the university's School of Public Health.

The potential and rapid progression of the UMD brain cap technology can be seen in a host of recent developments, including a just published study in the Journal of Neurophysiology, new grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health, and a growing list of partners that includes the University of Maryland School of Medicine, the Veterans Affairs Maryland Health Care System, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Rice University and Walter Reed Army Medical Center's Integrated Department of Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation.

"We are doing something that few previously thought was possible," said Contreras-Vidal, who is also an affiliate professor in Maryland's Fischell Department of Bioengineering and the university's Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program. "We use EEG [electroencephalography] to non-invasively read brain waves and translate them into movement commands for computers and other devices.

Peer Reviewed

Contreras-Vidal and his team have published three major papers on their technology over the past 18 months, the latest a just released study in the Journal of Neurophysiology in which they successfully used EEG brain signals to reconstruct the complex 3-D movements of the ankle, knee and hip joints during human treadmill walking. In two earlier studies they showed (1) similar results for 3-D hand movement and (2) that subjects wearing the brain cap could control a computer cursor with their thoughts.

Alessandro Presacco, a second-year doctoral student in Contreras-Vidal's Neural Engineering and Smart Prosthetics Lab, Contreras-Vidal and co-authors write that their Journal of Neurophysiology study indicated "that EEG signals can be used to study the cortical dynamics of walking and to develop brain-machine interfaces aimed at restoring human gait function."

There are other brain computer interface technologies under development, but Contreras-Vidal notes that these competing technologies are either very invasive, requiring electrodes to be implanted directly in the brain, or, if noninvasive, require much more training to use than does UMD's EEG-based, brain cap technology.

Partnering to Help Sufferers of Injury and Stroke

Contreras-Vidal and his team are collaborating on a rapidly growing cadre projects with researchers at other institutions to develop thought-controlled robotic prosthetics that can assist victims of injury and stroke. Their latest partnership is supported by a new $1.2 million NSF grant. Under this grant, Contreras-Vidal's Maryland team is embarking on a four-year project with researchers at Rice University, the University of Michigan and Drexel University to design a prosthetic arm that amputees can control directly with their brains, and which will allow users to feel what their robotic arm touches.

"There's nothing fictional about this," said Rice University co-principal investigator Marcia O'Malley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering. "The investigators on this grant have already demonstrated that much of this is possible. What remains is to bring all of it -- non-invasive neural decoding, direct brain control and [touch] sensory feedback -- together into one device."

In a NIH-supported project underway, Contreras-Vidal and his colleagues are pairing their brain cap's EEG-based technology with a DARPA-funded next-generation robotic arm designed by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory to function like a normal limb. And the UMD team is developing a new collaboration with the New Zealand's start-up Rexbionics, the developer of a powered lower-limb exoskeleton called Rex that could be used to restore gait after spinal cord injury.

Two of the earliest partnerships formed by Contreras-Vidal and his team are with the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Baltimore. A particular focus of this research is the use of the brain cap technology to help stroke victims whose brain injuries affect their motor-sensory control. Originally funded by a seed grant from the University of Maryland, College Park and the University of Maryland, Baltimore, the work now also is supported by a VA merit grant (anklebot BMI) and an NIH grant (Stroke).

"There is a big push in brain science to understand what exercise does in terms of motor learning or motor retraining of the human brain," says Larry Forrester, an associate professor of physical therapy and rehabilitation science at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

For the more than a year, Forrester and the UMD team have tracked the neural activity of people on a treadmill doing precise tasks like stepping over dotted lines. The researchers are matching specific brain activity recorded in real time with exact lower-limb movements.

This data could help stroke victims in several ways, Forrester says. One is a prosthetic device, called an "anklebot," or ankle robot, that stores data from a normal human gait and assists partially paralyzed people. People who are less mobile commonly suffer from other health issues such as obesity, diabetes or cardiovascular problems, Forrester says, "so we want to get [stroke survivors] up and moving by whatever means possible."

The second use of the EEG data in stroke victims is more complex, yet offers exciting possibilities. "By decoding the motion of a normal gait," Contreras-Vidal says, "we can then try and teach stroke victims to think in certain ways and match their own EEG signals with the normal signals." This could "retrain" healthy areas of the brain in what is known as neuroplasticity.

One potential method for retraining comes from one of the Maryland research team's newest members, Steve Graff, a first-year bioengineering doctoral student. He envisions a virtual reality game that matches real EEG data with on-screen characters. "It gives us a way to train someone to think the right thoughts to generate movement from digital avatars. If they can do that, then they can generate thoughts to move a device," says Graff, who brings a unique personal perspective to the work. He has congenital muscular dystrophy and uses a motorized wheelchair. The advances he's working on could allow him to use both hands -- to put on a jacket, dial his cell phone or throw a football while operating his chair with his mind.

No Surgery Required

During the past two decades a great deal of progress has been made in the study of direct brain to computer interfaces, most of it through studies using monkeys with electrodes implanted in their brains. However, for use in humans such an invasive approach poses many problems, not the least of which is that most people don't' want holes in their heads and wires attached to their brains. "EEG monitoring of the brain, which has a long, safe history for other applications, has been largely ignored by those working on brain-machine interfaces, because it was thought that the human skull blocked too much of the detailed information on brain activity needed to read thoughts about movement and turn those readings into movement commands for multi-functional high-degree of freedom prosthetics," said Contreras-Vidal. He is among the few who have used EEG, MEG or other sensing technologies to develop non-invasive neural interfaces, and the only one to have demonstrated decoding results comparable to those achieved by researchers using implanted electrodes.

A paper Contreras-Vidal and colleagues published in the Journal of Neuroscience in March 2010 showed the feasibility of Maryland's EEG-based technology to infer multidimensional natural movement from noninvasive measurements of brain activity. In their two latest studies, Contreras-Vidal and his team have further advanced the development of their EEG brain interface technology, and provided powerful new evidence that it can yield brain computer interface results as good as or better than those from invasive studies, while also requiring minimal training to use.

In a paper published in April in the Journal of Neural Engineering, the Maryland team demonstrated that people wearing the EEG brain cap, could after minimal training control a computer cursor with their thoughts and achieve performance levels comparable to those by subjects using invasive implanted electrode brain computer interface systems. Contreras-Vidal and his co-authors write that this study also shows that compared to studies of other noninvasive brain control interface systems, training time with their system was substantially shorter, requiring only a single 40-minute session.

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by University of Maryland.

Journal Reference:

A. Presacco, R. Goodman, L. W. Forrester, J. L. Contreras-Vidal. Neural decoding of treadmill walking from non-invasive, electroencephalographic (EEG) signals. Journal of Neurophysiology, 2011; DOI: 10.1152/jn.00104.2011

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

View the original article here

Why people phone hack: A look into the psyche of wrongdoing

ScienceDaily (July 28, 2011) — Phone hacking. It doesn't even sound ethical. Neither does phone spying nor so called, 'phreaking.' So how does management at a best-selling newspaper approve this and everyone else play along?

"Some people may have remained quiet because they believed that this was acceptable practice -- perfectly normal for the non-naïve," says UAB social psychologist Rex Wright, Ph.D. "Some people consider you to be naive if you abide by conventional rules of ethics."

The first allegations of phone hacking against News of the World came in 2005 when the Royal Family accused the paper of intercepting voice mails. The investigation led to two resignations and two guilty pleas in January 2007. Many believed the violations extended beyond the Royal Family but the investigation ended.

Four years later to the month the Metropolitan Police announced a new investigation into the phone hacking scandal. The new investigation revealed the phone hacking continued despite the 2007 convictions.

"People might have felt that this was a small price to pay for a very lucrative activity," says Wright, professor in the UAB Department of Psychology. "They also might have believed the odds of getting caught twice were small, especially if police officials were turning a blind eye. They might have had some arrangement with officials that allowed them to continue if they had resignations and convictions on occasion."

There is a lot more to this scandal than we know or may ever know. We know phone hacking went on for years. We know a lot of people knew, yet nobody stopped the behavior. "People can become convinced that something is okay as a result of watching others," Wright says. "Consider a boy watching an uncle sell drugs. If the uncle is admired, the kid could come to believe that selling drugs is in fact okay and ethical."

"Life is complicated and people are not always right just because they think they are right," says Wright. "Wise people tend to have a strong measure of modesty about the conclusions that they draw, including ones relevant to ethics."

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

View the original article here

New therapy may help people with unexplained symptoms of pain, weakness and fatigue

ScienceDaily (July 28, 2011) — A new type of therapy may help people with symptoms such as pain, weakness, or dizziness that can't be explained by an underlying disease, according to a study published in the July 27, 2011, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. These symptoms, which can also include fatigue, tingling and numbness, are also known as functional or psychogenic symptoms.

"People with these symptoms make up one-third of all clinic visits, but the outcomes are poor," said study author Michael Sharpe, MD, of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Previous studies have shown that intense cognitive behavioral therapy can reduce the symptoms, distress and disability in people with these symptoms, but there are obstacles to providing this therapy. Many people do not feel psychological treatment is appropriate and resist referrals to mental health services, and therapists trained in cognitive behavioral therapy are not available in all communities.

Cognitive behavioral therapy aims to improve people's physical symptoms, emotional state and functioning by helping them to understand, and where necessary change, how they think about and respond to their symptoms and life situation.

For the study, the researchers developed a self-help workbook especially for patients with physical symptoms that was based on the therapy. A total of 62 people were given the workbook and over three months had up to four half-hour hour sessions guiding them in the use of the book with a nurse at their neurologist's office in addition to their usual medical care. They were compared to 63 people who received only their usual medical care. Most of the participants also had psychiatric diagnoses, such as panic disorder, anxiety disorder and depression.

After three months, the people who received the extra therapy were approximately twice as likely to report improvements in their overall health as those who did not receive the extra therapy. A total of 13 percent more people who received the extra therapy reported that their health was "better" or "much better" than those who received only their usual care.

After six months, there was no longer a significant difference in improvements in overall health between the two groups. However, those receiving the extra therapy continued to have greater improvement in their symptoms than those who received the usual care and also in their physical functioning. They were also more satisfied with their treatment.

"This study suggests that cognitive behavioral therapy-based guided self-help may be a new and potentially useful first step in improving the management of these challenging symptoms," Sharpe said. "This approach needs further evaluation but can be a potentially effective and cost-effective first step toward providing more help for these often neglected patients."

The study was supported by the United Kingdom Medical Research Council.

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by American Academy of Neurology.

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

View the original article here