The NHS is launching phone apps to help people cope with depression
- GPs can prescribe apps to patients who don't want to talk to a counsellor
- But health chiefs stressed one-to-one counselling would still be available
The
NHS is helping launch a new generation of apps to help people cope with
stress, anxiety and depression – just by using their mobile phones.
GPs
will be able to prescribe the apps to patients put off by the prospect
of talking to a counsellor. Health chiefs believe they will also help
millions of people unwilling to go to a doctor in the first place.
Tim
Kelsey, the Government’s ‘digital health tsar’, said he wanted to
produce ‘a sort of NHS-endorsed app store for mental health’, hosted on
the NHS Choices website.
A new generation of apps has been
launched to help people cope with stress, anxiety and depression – just
by using their mobile phones
But
he admitted many would question whether screens could ever be as
effective as face-to-face therapy, and stressed it was not a question of
one or the other.
He said: ‘If people want and need one-to-one counselling, then that’s absolutely what they will get.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 350 million people of all ages suffer from depression worldwide.
It is the leading cause of disability worldwide, and is a major contributor to the global burden of disease, it said.
GPs will be able to prescribe the apps for mobile phones to patients put off by the prospect of talking to a counsellor
At its worst, depression can lead to suicide. Suicide results in an estimated 1 million deaths every year, the WHO warns.
In recent studies, depression has also been found to affect the way that people experience time.
Research found that time seems to pass extremely slowly or even stand still when a person suffers from depression.
Dr
Daniel Oberfeld-Twistel, of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz,
Germany, said: 'Psychiatrists and psychologists in hospitals and private
practices repeatedly report that depressed patients feel that time only
creeps forward slowly or is passing in slow motion.
'We
found strong indicators that in depressed individuals the subjective
feeling of the passage of time differs from the ability to assess the
actual duration of external events.'
His
team looked at the results from 16 individual studies in which 433
depressed people and 485 non-depressed people participated.
In the studies, the participants were asked to estimate the duration of periods of time.
The
results obtained for the depressed subjects were exactly the same as
those for the healthy ones without any relevant statistical difference.
'We
found strong indicators that in depressed individuals the subjective
feeling of the passage of time differs from the ability to assess the
actual duration of external events,' concluded Dr Oberfeld-Twistel.
He
added his team identified several aspects of the relation between
depression and time perception that have not yet been investigated
adequately.
Little
is actually known about the effects of antidepressants and
psychotherapy, or how patients with bipolar disorders compared to
non-bipolar depression assess the passing of time.
Future
studies need to clearly differentiate between the subjective perception
of the passage of time, and a person's ability to estimate the
precisely defined lengths of time, he added.
FREDDIE FLINTOFF OPENS UP ABOUT HIS BATTLE WITH DEPRESSION
Flintoff,
once almost as well known for his partying ways as he was for his
cricketing skills, spoke candidly about his battles with mental illness
and alcohol earlier this month on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of
Here!
The
37-year-old also casually mentioned he no longer indulges with alcohol,
and when asked why explained: 'I genuinely thought I had enough of
it... I suffer with depression and it doesn't help at all, [you] just
hit rock bottom afterwards.'
Moment of realisation: The athlete and
media personality revealed that he realised he struggled with the
mental illness when he did a documentary on depression in sports
Freddie
said that he still goes out on the town but that there's no alcohol
involved when he does, telling that after one drink, 'you kind of drink
to change how you feel and it's just bad.'
'Life's so much easier with not having any... the things that tend to go wrong are drink fuelled.'
The
athlete and media personality revealed that he realised he struggled
with the mental illness when he did a documentary on depression in
sports.
'I
never knew what it was and I've always never said anything, and
speaking to other people I identified with how I felt and I could sort
it out, treat it.'
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