For many counties the month of October marks the end of the GAA Season with Championship matches reaching final stages. Today marked the end of the Galway Championship and many will have left Tuam Stadium already missing the weekly fixtures and county wide excursions. For many the GAA provides not only a social outlet but a topic of conversation and a stimulation that fills the week. The winter months bring the dark evenings and solitariness can threaten.

While the evenings are long that doesn’t mean that you yourself cannot engage in some exercise. It is well known that exercise helps with low mood and depression. Research tells us that to stay healthy, adults should do 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity every week. However, even a 15-minute walk can help you clear your mind and relax. Any exercise is better than none.

Many treatments are available for depression, including talking therapies, antidepressant medication and self-help of various kinds. A landmark research study has been published in the World Psychiatry Journal by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Mental Health Trust this month which provides significant evidence for the efficacy of long-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy for NHS patients suffering from chronic depression.

Started over ten years ago, the study is the first randomised controlled trial in the NHS to establish if this type of psychotherapy can help people not helped by treatments currently provided: antidepressants, short-term courses of counselling or cognitive behavioural therapy.

The study found that:

• 44% of the patients who were given 18 months of weekly psychoanalytic psychotherapy no longer had major depressive disorder when followed up two years after therapy had ended; for those receiving treatments currently provided by the NHS, the figure was 10%
• While just 14% of those receiving the psychoanalytic psychotherapy had recovered completely, full recovery occurred in only 4% of those receiving the treatments currently provided by the NHS
• In every 6-month period of the trial’s exceptional 3 ½ years of observation of participants, the chances of going into partial remission for those receiving psychoanalytic psychotherapy were 40% higher than for those who were receiving the usual treatments
• After two years of follow-up, depressive symptoms had partially remitted in 30% of those receiving the psychoanalytic therapy; in the control condition this figure was again only 4%
• Those receiving the psychoanalytic psychotherapy also saw significantly more benefits to their quality of life, general wellbeing and social and personal functioning
• Some patients did not benefit and research is ongoing to identify the reasons underlying the differences in responsiveness.

PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOTHERAPY IS AVAILABLE IN TUAM. Contact Theresa Merrigan on 087 4120758

The paper has been published in the open access journal World Psychiatry: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wps.20267/pdf

The following report on the NHS is courtesy of : http://www.app-nhs.org.uk/content/publication-landmark-psychoanalytic-psychotherapy-depression-study