WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-Battling the blues

October 12, 2011

Just two years ago, Nilou Siman couldn't imagine that she could teach yoga.

"I wasn't functioning, I wasn't working, I didn't really go outside," Siman said.

Siman had struggled with depression since her teens, but by her mid-20s she'd deteriorated to the point where she couldn't even get out of bed.

"I tried just about everything. It never went anywhere. I have tried medications, everything and anything even with the

meds I was still depressed," she said.

But that all changed when she started future-directed therapy.

"One of the goals of future-directed therapy is to activate parts of the brain that are a little more sluggish in patients with depression," said Dr. Jennice Vilhauer of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Traditional therapy tries to change irrational, negative thoughts about life experiences. With future-directed therapy, Vilhauer has patients take the focus off their past and look forward in their lives. Her published study found that patients in future-directed therapy became less depressed and had less anxiety than those in traditional talk therapy. They were also eight times more likely to say that future-directed therapy was helping them enjoy life.

It's a simple idea really-- setting goals and pursuing them. But to someone who is depressed that sounds impossible.

"I I thought I was doomed," Siman said. "I thought there is no way I could ever, ever get out of this."

Siman says before future-directed therapy she would never have done this interview. Now, she wants to give hope to other patients who can't see a future.

Click here for more on the future-directed therapy study.