Online therapy may help people with mental disorder
LONDON: An internet based therapy may help people affected by a common anxiety disorder which could lead to hospitalization, substance dependence and even suicide, a new study has claimed.
Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is a common anxiety disorder that causes a person to have a distorted view of how they look and to spend a lot of time worrying about their appearance.
Researchers from Karolinska Institute and Linkoping University in Sweden and King's College London in UK set out to evaluate the effectiveness of a therapist guided internet based cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) programme for body dysmorphic disorder (BDD-NET) compared with online supportive therapy.
The study involved 94 adult patients with a diagnosis of body dysmorphic disorder who randomly received either BDD-NET or supportive therapy for 12 weeks.
None of the participants had any face-to-face contact with a therapist during treatment and both groups were followed for 3 months after the end of treatment.
BDD-NET resulted in significant improvements in symptom severity, depression, and quality of life compared with supportive therapy. These gains were maintained for at least three months after the end of treatment.
At that point, 56% of those receiving BDD-NET were classed as responders (defined as a 30% or more reduction in symptoms on a recognized scoring scale) compared with 13% receiving supportive therapy.