Canadian Study: Three-hour Therapy Session Reduces Teen Depression

By October 14, 2013July 16th, 2019Dangerous Drugs

According to a new study, three hours of therapy in school may help reduce the onset of depression and other mental disorders in teens. The study originally was intended to help train teachers to intervene early with teens who were likely to develop depression or other disorders as well as to discover ways that teachers can intervene and prevent teens from turning to alcohol or drugs.

What the researchers found during this study was that as many as a third of the 509 13-year-old participants experienced fewer cases of mental disorders like depression after taking part in two 90-minute therapy sessions given by teachers. The team of researchers who conducted the study were from the University of Montreal-affiliated Research Center of CHU Sainte-Justine.

Researcher Dr. Patricia Conrod stated that the workshops helped the kids who were vulnerable to depression and other mental disorders or drug and alcohol use.

“It was delivered early in their trajectory, before the onset of substance abuse, before mental health problems may begin to interfere with their social and cognitive development,” Conrod said in an interview with CTVNews.ca. “By delivering interventions in a targeted way, you’re able to do a lot more focused work in a shorter amount of time.”

Depression is often treated with antidepressant medications like Paxil and Effexor, which have both been known to cause patients to suffer from violent and suicidal thoughts and behavior as well as led to birth defects in babies born to mothers who take the pills while pregnant. The birth defects linked to Paxil use include PPHN, spina bifida, neural tube defects, oral clefts and heart, lung and brain defects. These side effects have caused many doctors to stop prescribing the drugs to patients in favor of more traditional talk therapy.