Assisting Depression Treatment With Your PC or Smartphone

In our first blog last year, “Our Phones & Mindfulness” we talked about the tremendous power technology has had on our culture in positive and negative ways.  In that blog we encouraged mindful consumption of smartphone usage and even taking intentional breaks from electronics.  However, from the perspective of not fighting the trend and being a “realist” related to just how much PC’s and Smartphones dominate the lives of many people we are going to highlight some ways technology can help assist depression treatment.


Behavioral Activation is considered one of the most effective treatments for depression and a new product “Willow” has incorporated your PC front and center into this treatment.  Behavioral Activation is not a complicated treatment, it’s basically utilizing daily activities to reverse a downward spiral of mood and sedentariness (doing nothing), and move into an upward spiral of improved mood as people often become less depressed when they get moving with healthy activities that are pleasurable and important to them.  Motivational strategies are important in achieving this but for the purpose of this short blog I’m going to focus on the Willow technology which utilizes the increased presence of electronics to manage depression.


Willow is still in the development stage but I’ve had the pleasure of being in their research study and given full access to use the product.  It’s eventually going to be marketed to large hospital organizations and likely will have very little exposure in small private practices like ours.  So far Willow has been a very helpful tool in working with clients.  Clients are sent an email and have access to the Willow site in seconds.  The therapist and client accounts are now synced and the therapist can assign videos to watch, homework assignments, weekly tracking measures, etc.  Therapist and client then review this material at each weekly session.  Well designed plot graphs show your weekly tracking measures related to anxiety, depression, stress, etc.  All of the content is very simple, common sense, and that's probably what makes it work because most of us prefer things to not be too complicated.  A lot of us are on our computers all too often and it takes advantage of that.  

There is something about seeing things in black and white which can be highly motivating, and related to this Willow had a dramatic affect with a recent client who was experiencing unabating depression for quite some time.   After several weeks of data this client observed clearly on the plotted graph that as stress and activity continued to decrease, depression continued to increase.  The next week they made a commitment to follow through with the hierarchy of activities we brainstormed and the depression lifted rather dramatically after a few weeks.  I’ve had other clients who have enjoyed watching the videos and found the activity monitoring to be helpful.  However, my overall experience has been the tracking measures to be the most helpful for client and therapist. I believe this is related to how well those weeks of data on various metrics are beautifully presented to the client.  It can be insightful and motivating.


There is another product on the market “Therachat,” that is considerably more common which we are currently researching and considering using with our client base.  Therachat utilizes the commonly known “App” which can be downloaded in the Apple or Android App Stores.  Similar to Willow, you can assign your clients homework with customized activities, track emotions and symptoms, spot patterns over time, and practice journaling.  Importantly, it provides reminders to do these things along with reminders to practice skills learned in session.  The content is available for your therapist to review making it easier to stay connected with your week.  Changing behaviors and patterns often involves first remembering to practice new behaviors, and these products can be helpful in assisting those efforts as most of us usually have a device nearby throughout the day.  If you have any experience using this product with a past therapist we’d love to hear your opinion in the comments.


In summary, we have found technology to be helpful in assisting with our mental health treatment.  We will likely see more of this in the future.  We have chosen to embrace some of these trends and look forward to offering these tools to our clients in managing depression and other mental health struggles.  Please feel free to inquire with any questions about these tools and treatments and comments are always welcome below.


Best Regards,

Chad Randall, M.Ed., LPC, CCDP-D
Elephant Rock Counseling
Kirkwood, MO