The BBC reports that a brain training technique which helps people control activity in a specific part of the brain could help treat depression. 

Cardiff University researchers used MRI scanners to show eight people how their brains reacted to positive imagery. After four sessions of the therapy the participants had seen significant improvements in their depression.

Another eight who were asked to think positively but did not see brain images as they did so showed no change.  The researchers said they believed the MRI scans allowed participants to work out, through trial and error, which sort of positive emotional imagery was most effective.

But the team acknowledge that further research, involving a larger number of people, is needed to ascertain how effective the therapy is, particularly in the long term. Prof David Linden, who led the study which was published in the PLoS One journal, said it had the potential to become part of the "treatment package" for depression.

About a fifth of people will develop depression at some point in their lives and a third of those will not respond to standard treatments. Prof Linden added: "One of the interesting aspects of this technique is that it gives patients the experience of controlling aspects of their own brain activity.
"Many of them were very interested in this new way of engaging with their brains."


A vit of a limited study and I'm not sure how many would benefit if an MRI scanner was required for everyone! But as the researcher says it is early days and more studies will be required to determine its true efficacyStill as someone who  suffered from depression for much of his adult life, any effective treatment that doesn't mean taking drugs is going to be welcome

Beating (err whipping) depression and addiction

An old story I know, but it’s quite an unconventional way to tackle depression! According to Pravda in 2005 scientists from Novosibirsk made a sensational report at an international conference devoted to new methods of treatment and rehabilitation in narcology called “Methods of painful impact to treat addictive behaviour.” According to the report addiction, depression, and psychosomatic diseases occur when an individual loses his or her interest in life. This is caused by decreased endorphin production. If a depressed individual receives physical punishment it will stir up endorphin receptors, activate the “production of happiness” and eventually remove depressive feelings.

Russian scientists recommend the following course of the whipping therapy: 30 sessions of 60 whips on the buttocks in every procedure. A group of drug addicts volunteered to test the new method of treatment: the results can be described as good and excellent. Doctor of Biological Sciences, Sergei Speransky, is one of the authors of the whipping therapy. The professor apparently used the self-flagellation method to cure his own depression; he also recovered from two heart attacks with the help of physical tortures too.

”The whipping therapy becomes much more efficient when a patient receives the punishment from a person of the opposite sex. The effect is astounding: the patient starts seeing only bright colours in the surrounding world, the heartache disappears, although it will take a certain time for the buttocks to heal, of course,” he said.

The whipping therapy is not new: Soviet specialists used a special method of torturing therapy at mental hospitals (so not just in the gulags?) . They made injections of brimstone and peach oil mixture to inspire mentally unbalanced patience with a will to live. A patient would suffer from horrible pain in the body after such an injection, but he or she would change their attitude to life for the better afterwards. ”People might probably think of me as a masochist,” Dr. Speransky said. “But I can assure you that I am not a classic masochist at all,” he added.

Hmmm: Prozac or a good thrashing.....I somehow think most would opt for the former rather than the latter. I suppose Leopold von Sacher Masoch might have looked forward to being a bit low though!