Direct current stimulation study

Title:
Direct Current Stimulation as a non-medication treatment for depression

Researchers:
Associate Professor Colleen Loo (UNSW / Black Dog Institute)

Organisation:
School of Psychiatry, UNSW; Black Dog Institute, Randwick NSW

Details:
Researchers are investigating direct current stimulation (DCS) as a treatment for depression and potential alternative to medication and electroconvulsive therapy. Very weak currents are used to stimulate the brain. The stimulation is painless with no known serious side effects, and the person is fully awake and alert during the 20 minute treatment sessions. Participants will be required to attend the Black Dog Institute from Monday to Friday for 3 to 6 weeks usually for 30 minutes per visit.

Participants required:
Participants must be at least 18 years old and experiencing feelings of depression for at least 4 weeks prior to study entry.

Contact:
If you would like more information or are interested in participating, please call Angelo Alonzo on (02) 9382 3720 or Donel Martin on (02) 9382 9261 or email TMSandDCS@unsw.edu.au

Depression in older adults and their carers

Introducing the sixth annual Black Dog Institute writing competition for 2009/2010.

Open to Australian and New Zealand residents, this year's theme focuses on late onset depression, that is depression that occurs for the first time late in life, after sixty years of age. Also of interest are the experiences of carers of older people. First prize receives $2000, second $1500, third $500.

Interested? You need to act fast as entries must be received by the 15th January 2010. App;ication form and conditions can be found here.

You can read winning and short-listed entries from the previous five years by following the links below:

Tackling Mood Disorders in the Workplace (2008/2009)

Mood Disorders in Adolescence - Grassroots Solutions (2007/2008)

The Getting of Wisdom - Managing the Highs of Biploar Disorder (2006/2007)

Living with Depression (2005/2006)

The Black Dog as a descriptor for depression (2004/2005)

DepED

It's over a year since I first highlighted DepEd, an online resource for understanding and managing depression from the Black Dog Institute. As several people have since mentioned to me how useful they found DepEd to be, I thought it worth mentioning again.

There are seven modules in total, from depression in general through to specific types of depression through to getting help and keeping well.

This part of the Black Dog site also include a link to a set of modules for bipolar disorder education, personal stories from people who have experienced various types of depression, links to an extensive set of fact and hint sheets, and to various books available for purchase.

A great set of resources. Let me know what you like (or even don't like)?

SMS tracking your moods

If only I'd read about this last week. Would have been a perfect iPhone entry for Grand Rounds over at Shrink Rap (link in sidebar).

A $1.88 million Federal Government grant has been awarded to the Black Dog Institute and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) to undertake a program to enable Australians to manage their mental health problems via mobile phone and the internet.

The idea is that people will be able to track their status on a daily basis in areas such as mood, sleep, activities, medication, physical activity as well as drug and alcohol abuse. Aimed at adolescents and adults with or at risk of developing depression, anxiety or stress, the first stage of the program will be the internet version, to be followed by the mobile phone version.

Dr Judy Proudfoot, Senior Research Fellow at the Black Dog Institute and the School of Psychiatry at the University of New South Wales, explains that information is fed back to the users on how they are going and alerts are sent when things aren’t going well, along with links to appropriate self-help tools. In this way, the program parallels traditional face-to-face therapy, where people are asked to monitor their symptoms and activities.

A timely project. It will interesting to see how it turns out, particularly in terms of management of confidentiality because, quite coincidentally, someone recently mentioned that they do this kind of thing with their therapist between sessions. In contrast to the Black Dog project, they don't receive any feedback or response until the next session. Initially, it raised questions of boundaries and dependency for me, particularly when they said they would demand that any other therapist (they were thinking of changing) also do this. I didn't even stop to consider the unthinkable which happened when the therapist passed his/her phone along to someone else (not a therapist). All journalling entries then went to this third person who didn't pass them on. As you can imagine, the potential for distress in that situation proved significant.

DepEd

Another fabulous initiative from The Black Dog Institute. Straight from their newsdesk:

The Black Dog Institute today launched DepEd, an online education program to help people better understand and manage depression. The Black Dog Institute believes there is a distinct need at the present time to make the assessment and management of mood disorders more sophisticated to ensure people are not over-treated or under-treated for their condition.

Check it out here! Bookmark it for future reference.