Comparison The Effectiveness of Online Text Messenger-Based Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and Telephone-Based Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy on Persistent Depression Desorder

Depression is one of the frequent psychological disorders. In developing countries due to the high cost of the therapy, lack of access to a professional psychiatrist or psychologist and cultural misunderstanding, and other barriers many people can not get any treatment. Mass utilization of Telephones and Smartphones in the world provides an opportunity to bring help to those in need where it is not easy/able to get professional support treatment. The goal of this research is to compare the effects of online text messenger-based therapy and Telephone-based Cognitive-behavior therapy on Persistent Depression. This was a quasi-experimental study with a pretest-posttest and a control group design. The study population included all 18– to 55– year–olds referring to four counseling and psychology clinics in the west of Tehran city, Iran, in the year 2019. 30  Persistent depressed patients were randomly selected as the study samples. The research tools were: The BDI-2 Beck et al. (1988) the Beck Depression Inventory with 21 questions and the SCID-5-CV First et al. (2016) the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5. Data were analyzed by SPSS-22 software using covariance analysis(ANCOVA). According to the findings of the study, that both cognitive-behavior therapy interventions (by Telephone and by WhatsApp) significantly decreased persistent depression in patients (p< 0.01). However, There were no significant differences in the effectiveness of these two interventions on these variables. Both of the methods (telephone and Online Text Messenger-Based cognitive-behavior) were effective to decrease the symptoms of depression.