Depression is something that hits and hurts too many people. Can brainwave entrainment help with depression?
I am talking about chronic depression rather than the blues. If you suffer from chronic depression you have a serious debilitating illness. I remember one woman I met at my daughter's graduation. She could not stop weeping. She had clearly made a huge effort just to be there with her husband but she couldn't enjoy it. Her poor husband did his best but we were not even able to be introduced as she was in no fit state to talk to anyone. I so felt for her and her husband and daughter. I am sure she was on medication but it wasn't making a lot of difference to how she felt.
This was the severe end of depression. There are others who are not so severely affected but they also suffer.
So I was interested to read that work had been done on brainwave entrainment and depression. Dr Cantor, PH.D., presented a paper on a pilot study at the annual meeting of the EEG and Clinical Neuroscience Society. of which he is President.
The pilot study included 16 patients, with a mean age of 45 years, who had a long history of refractory depression that was minimally responsive to medication. Patients were required to stop all medications 1 month prior to the start of the study. Baseline tests included quantitative electroencephalography (QEEG) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Patients were divided into two groups of eight, with the first group receiving 20 minutes of audiovisual entrainment (AVE) therapy daily for 4 weeks, at a frequency of 14 Hz. The other group of patients wore the AVE equipment for 4 weeks but did not get the stimulation treatment. The equipment consists of a control device, a goggle-like eyeset, and headphones that produce flashing lights and pulsing sounds. After 4 weeks, BDI testing revealed "a huge drop" in self-reported depression scores in the treatment group, compared with no change in the untreated group, said Dr. Cantor. QEEG testing also showed neurophysiologic changes in the treated patients (but not the untreated group) that corresponded to their reports of improved mood. "The QEEG changes we saw were noted in the frontal regions of the brain that have been shown by other studies to be involved in mood regulation," he said. The groups were then crossed over, so that the untreated group received treatment and vice versa for another 4 weeks. Similar results were noted in the newly treated group, but the group that had received the first phase of treatment showed a sustained effect of treatment, both behaviorally and neurophysiologically, even after 4 weeks of discontinuation. "That is suggestive of an enduring effect of the therapy," Dr. Cantor said.
The study used audio visual brainwave entrainment at 14hz which is the beta range for helping with depression.
This was just one study and with only 16 patients. it will be interesting to see if this can be replicated and whether the severity of the depression affects results.
Read the whole article here: Brainwave entrainment and depression
We have a self help for depression MP3 download that uses the same protocol of 14hz. If you would like to try this kind of self help for your depression you can learn more about it here: Depression Audio
