ABSTRACT
Over the past two years Ireland, Finland, Norway, Spain, and UK, have been involved in jointly researching a psycho-educational approach to treating/preventing depression (The Odin research project), using an adaptation of Munoz’s “Coping with Depression” Course as the group treatment (Munoz and Ying, 1993). Statistical analysis of the extensive data collected is currently being carried out, and the Partners** will present the results shortly. As the two instructors involved in giving the group treatment programmes in Ireland and the U.K. we would like to look at the research, not statistically, but from a different perspective — our own, and from that of some of the participants. We were struck by the many positive effects that we perceived in the participants during the course of the treatment programmes. A welcome and unexpected bonus was that similar positive effects were also evident in our own lives, thus convincing us further of the value of this work. Now that the treatment stage of the research is at a close we would like to share our experiences of running the groups with others, looking in a critical way at the benefits and restrictions of following a manualised prevention programme.
