A team of American scientists came up with a curious statement on the pages of The Psychological Science journal: it turns out that apart from drugs, hope can successfully cure depression.
This was proved by a number of studies conducted by specialists with the participation of hundreds of volunteers suffering from depressive disorder. Authors of the article argue that this method of getting rid of the symptoms of depression is much more successful because medicines have too many side effects.
According to the experts, hope is directly related to a decrease in the number of symptoms of depression in patients. They developed a method for measuring the level of hope through two parameters: existence of a method of achieving the desired and the willpower to follow this method.
During “hope therapy” sessions, voluntary participants learnt skills associated with hope – how to define goals, achieve them, and methods of self-motivation. Results showed that sessions on hope therapy helped to dramatically reduce symptoms of depression compared with the control group. The scientists plan to continue research on this topic.
Source of the image: Photl.
