New Study Highlights Effectiveness of Lyra’s Blended Care Therapy

In recent years, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has gained increasing recognition as the gold standard psychotherapy treatment for common mental health conditions like anxiety and depression. A newer approach known as Blended Care Therapy (BC-CBT), which pairs therapist-led sessions with online CBT content, has also been proven effective at treating these disorders. Less understood is the effectiveness of BC-CBT using video-based therapy sessions, especially outside of clinical trials.

To evaluate the efficacy of BC-CBT using teletherapy in the real world, a team of researchers led by Lyra Health clinicians conducted a study of nearly 400 participants receiving this care. Today, that research was published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR).

“Our findings suggest that the BC-CBT program and its intense psychotherapy experience, resulting from combining video therapy sessions with personalized digital tools, were successful in delivering a clinically efficient treatment for depression and anxiety symptoms, as demonstrated by participants making great progress in a short duration of time,” said Anita Lungu, PhD, Lyra’s Director of Clinical Product and a lead author of the study.

The study’s publication comes as more than a third of Americans report symptoms of clinical anxiety or depression amid the coronavirus pandemic. As pandemic-related health and financial worries weigh on mental health and as millions remain at home to protect against the virus’s spread, quality online treatments like Lyra’s BC-CBT represent a chance to offer access to care to more people.

Key findings

The study showed that BC-CBT–one of Lyra’s treatment offerings in addition to in-person therapy, mental health coaching, and medication management–is not only highly effective, but also gets people better more quickly than CBT alone.

The research findings reveal that:

83 percent of participants recovered from anxiety or depression after receiving Lyra’s BC-CBT
Participants improved or recovered from their conditions two to three times faster than in typical CBT treatment
Clients experienced reliable symptom improvement at three times the rate of participants receiving therapy under traditional health plans

For more data points and a deeper dive into the study findings, get the executive summary.

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By The Lyra Team

6 of July 2020 - 2 min read

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