Brain Study: Psychotherapy works

Psychotherapy really works! This is according to new brain studies that show psychotherapy induces changes to brain function in the same way that drug treatments do.Veena Kumari conducted the studies at the Institute of Psychiatry and later published her results in a 2006 issue of the journal, Acta Neuropsychiatrica.

With regard to depression, her recent brain imaging study found recovery was associated with decreased metabolism in a part of the brain known as the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, both in patients who had improved after taking Seroxat, a medicine for depression, and in patients who had undergone cognitive behavioral psychotherapy. Successful therapy was also associated with brain changes that were not found after using Seroxat, including increased activity in the cingulate, frontal and hippocampus regions of the brain.

Similarly, in a study of obsessive compulsive disorder, a disorder in which people become obsessed with certain fears and perform compulsive rituals to prevent them, both cognitive behavioral psychotherapy and the use of Prozac were linked with brain changes Kumari referred to as “the right caudate metabolic rate.”

Cognitive behavioral therapy is known to be beneficial to schizophrenia patients who don’t respond to antipsychotic medication but no research has yet been published on its effects on the brain.

“The reviewed studies clearly demonstrate that psychological interventions, such as CBT, are able to modify activity in dysfunctional neural circuitries linked to the development of various psychopathological conditions,” Kumari concluded in her comparison review.

She added that psychotherapy may provide a clearer insight into the brain changes associated with recovery from mental illness because “it has minimal side-effects (if any) and [unlike drugs] lacks direct pharmaceutical actions to obscure brain changes directly related to behavioral change….”

The comparison of the effects of drug therapy and psychotherapy, however, only goes so far. Even if both have the same effect on the brain, psychotherapy does something that no drug can do: it allows patients to form an attachment with another human being, and through that attachment to understand themselves.

Common to all mental disturbances is a problem in relating to others. No medication can adequately address this problem, although drugs can make a person feel generally calmer about things. Psychotherapy provides a transitional attachment in which persons can learn about their relationship issues, trust or lack thereof, fear of intimacy, anger, jealousy and suspicion.

However, this study does manage to provide a scientific evidence of the effects of psychotherapy—something that has long been needed.

Now if only the whole world would go into psychotherapy.