Posted by caraher on June 28, 2006, at 16:00:38
A little zeitgeist- rattling... ;)
I did a phone session with my T Monday. I'd been doing fairly well for a long time (many months) but have been showing a lot of depression symptoms lately. Among her prescriptions were 20 minutes of aerobic exercise per day, writing a detailed daily schedule and sticking to it and looking for a meditation class.
She also said she's very interested in "Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy" and mentioned a book on that topic by Zindel V. Segal. I'm going to take a look at the book (the title is "Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression: A New Approach to Preventing Relapse"). While searching for the book I ran across the following link (http://www.psychiatry.ox.ac.uk/csr/mbct.html), which included this summary of a study:
" The results showed that MBCT helped most those who had suffered the most number of previous episodes. It had no effect on those who had only 2 episodes in the past (the minimum criteria for entry to the trial – about a quarter of the trial sample). By contrast, it substantially reduced the risk of relapse in those who had three or more previous episodes of depression (from 66 per cent to 37 per cent). Participants reported being able to develop a different (‘decentred’) relationship to their experience, so that their depression-inducing thoughts could be viewed from a wider perspective as they were occurring."
Has anyone had any experience with this kind of combination of CBT and meditation? It does seem like something worth exploring for people like me who have had repeated episodes of depression through the years...
poster:caraher
thread:662305
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060623/msgs/662305.html