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A postgraduate research opportunity at the University of Otago.

Details

Close date
No date set
Academic background
Health Sciences
Host campus
Dunedin
Qualification
Postgraduate Certificate, Postgraduate Diploma, Master's, Honours
Department
Psychological Medicine (Dunedin)
Supervisor
Dr Jerry Hsu, Mr Zaine Akuhata-Huntington

Overview

Depression is a common condition, with a lifetime prevalence of 20% of people in NZ.

Common approaches for treating depression include Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or Interpersonal Therapy. These therapies, however, require a qualified therapist, thereby increasing cost and limiting accessibility.

A proposed novel intervention, called Cognitive bias modification (CBM-D) for depression, is highly accessible, discrete, low-cost, and can be used alone or in adjunct with existing therapies. CBM-D targets an underlying factor – erroneous biased thinking – that is known to maintain depression, by training users to interpret texts of ambiguous, everyday scenarios in a non-erroneous manner.

Early data in the UK suggests benefits, but safety and efficacy of CBM-D have yet to be tested in the NZ context.

This project will:

  • Create CBM-D materials for the NZ context
  • Demonstrate CBM-D's safety and efficacy in a non-clinical sample

Contact

Jerry Hsu
Emailjerry.hsu@otago.ac.nz

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