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OU And WVU To Conduct Depression Treatment Study
By: Fred Kight
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Ohio University and West Virginia University have teamed up for a study to treat individuals with Type 2 diabetes and depression.
The project is called Program ACTIVE II and Doctor Frank Schwartz is one of the principal investigators.
Dr. Schwartz says that Program ACTIVE II is a community-based intervention program for persons that have Type 2 diabetes and depression.
"It's a trial where we are combining talk therapy and supervised exercise as a way of both improving a person's outlook about themselves and also improve their compliance with diabetes and to improve control and reduce complications," said Doctor Schwartz, Director of the Diabetes/Endocrine Center at Ohio University.
Dr. Schwartz says the study is unusual in that it is a four-pronged randomized trial, so participants must qualify by having enough depression.
Participants will be randomized into four groups including usual care therapy, talk therapy, supervised exercise and a combination of both talk and supervised exercise.
The study is based on an earlier study which showed patients who participated in both supervised exercise and talk therapy.
In this study, Dr. Schwartz and his colleagues will test to see if both of these approaches may be more effective in helping people live depression-free compared to talk therapy, exercise or usual care alone.
"Patients with depression and diabetes tend to do worse than non-depressed patients, so if we can develop an intervention that doesn't really cost that much money, this will improve patient's outlook," said Dr. Schwartz.
Dr. Schwartz says his team wants to enroll approximately 200 participants for the study, which is being conducted in the Parkersburg/Marietta area and Morgantown/Fairmont area.
The program is free and participants will receive a new glucose monitor.
Participants can sign up by calling (855) 362-2848.
The depression treatment study is also sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and Indiana University, along with Ohio University and West Virginia University.