Cognitive training as a facilitated self-help intervention for depression

这项提议的研究旨在评估一种对抑郁症进行自助治疗的新方法的可能价值。这种新方法涉及个人反复练习专门设计的任务，以直接改变已知的维持抑郁的思维方面。之前的研究已经证明，这种被称为认知训练的方法至少在短期内是有益的。因此，一次持续30分钟的认知训练可以减少个体对随后的沮丧事件的沮丧程度，而连续一周每天重复的认知训练可以减少轻度到中度抑郁症患者的抑郁症状。因此，这项研究的关键问题是，认知训练的这些积极影响在长期测试中是否仍然存在，在抑郁症更严重的人群中是否仍然存在。为了回答这个问题，单独的实验将比较(a)轻度到中度抑郁症状的人，(b)临床诊断为抑郁症的人，每天重复进行认知训练，持续1-8周，与不进行训练对抑郁症状的影响。人们希望，通过直接针对已知的维持抑郁的思维，认知训练将成为一种有效而有力的治疗抑郁症的方法。测试认知训练的更广泛意义在于，它可以很容易地发展成一种抑郁症的自助治疗方法，人们要么自己练习，要么在卫生保健工作者的简短指导下练习。尽管对抑郁症有有效的治疗方法，如抗抑郁药物和认知行为疗法，但英国大多数抑郁症患者没有得到充分的治疗。事实上，心理健康消费者的主要抱怨是缺乏获得心理帮助的途径。因此，人们建议开发有效的自助治疗方法，以确保尽可能多的抑郁症患者能够获得良好的心理帮助。因此，这种方法有可能成为一种有效的、低成本的、广泛可用的抑郁症干预措施，可供NHS内大量没有接受抑郁症专科治疗的患者使用，而且，这样，可以显著减少抑郁症带来的痛苦、痛苦、死亡率、残疾和经济负担。这项研究将通过制定广泛提供的自助包以及通过我们的网站和国家媒体报道我们的研究结果向公众宣传。

The proposed research aims to assess the possible value of a novel approach to self-help treatments for depression. This new approach involves individuals repeatedly practising tasks specially designed to directly change aspects of thinking known to maintain depression. Previous studies have demonstrated that this approach, called cognitive training, has beneficial effects, at least over the short-term. Thus, a single session of cognitive training lasting 30 minutes reduces how upset individuals get in response to a subsequent upsetting event, whilst cognitive training repeated daily for a week reduces depressive symptoms in people with mild to moderate levels of depression. Thus, the key question of the proposed research is whether these positive effects of cognitive training remain when tested over a longer-time scale and on people with more severe depression. To answer this question, separate experiments will compare the effects on symptoms of depression of cognitive training repeated daily for between 1-8 weeks against no training in (a) people with mild to moderate levels of depressive symptoms, and (b) people diagnosed with clinical depression. It is hoped that by directly targeting thinking known to maintain depression, cognitive training will be an effective and powerful treatment for depression. The wider relevance of testing cognitive training is that it could easily be developed into a self-help treatment for depression, with people either practising it on their own or with brief guidance from a health care worker. Despite having effective treatments for depression, such as antidepressant medication and cognitive behaviour therapy, the majority of people with depression in the UK do not receive adequate treatment. Indeed, the main complaint of mental health consumers is the lack of access to psychological help. The development of effective self-help treatments has therefore been recommended as one way to ensure that good psychological help is available and accessible to as large a number of patients with depression as possible. Thus, this approach has the potential to become an effective, low-cost, widely available intervention for depression that is accessible for the large numbers of patients within the NHS who do not receive specialist treatment for depression, and, as such, could significantly reduce the distress, suffering, mortality, disability and financial burden produced by depression. This research will be communicated to the general public by the development of a widely available self-help package and by reports on our findings through our website and the national media.