Defined as an intense, prolonged and debilitating sadness, depression is a growing problem in Canada and around the world. While antidepressant drugs can help, a new Canadian study has found that talk therapy may give sufferers an even bigger boost.

Some 1.1 million people are affected by depression each year. The World Health Organization predicts that within 20 years, depression will become the second leading cause of disability in the world.

Symptoms can include sadness, loss of energy, appetite and sex drive, digestive problems and insomnia or an increased need for sleep, along with a slew of other problems. In extreme cases, depression can even lead to suicide.

With billions of hours lost in productivity and increased illness and ability to cope among sufferers, it's no wonder prescriptions for anti-depressants have increased dramatically over the last decade. In Canada, sufferers spend over $500 million a year on anti-depressants. While they are effective, drugs are costly and may cause a slew of side effects, including nausea, headache, rashes and hallucinations.

Now a new Canadian study has found that talk therapy may give sufferers of depression an even bigger boost than popular drugs such as Prozac -- with none of the accompanying effects.

In fact, the benefits of talk therapy over antidepressants were so high, they surprised even the researchers involved in the study.

"When we first analyzed the data it didn't look like anything we expected," says Dr. Helen Mayberg of the University of Toronto.

Researchers performed brain scans on depressed patients both before and after treatment and found improvement in about 70 per cent of cases, regardless of whether they were treated by pills or talk therapy.

But Mayberg and her team found that while antidepressants boosted brain activity in some areas, talk therapy also managed to decrease some of the brain activity responsible for negative emotions in other parts of the brain.

Mayberg cautions that while talk therapy seems to be beneficial, it's not the easy way out. "It's way harder than taking a pill. You have to work at it, do exercises, watch your environment. Instead of having a routine way of handling information, you handle it a new way. That's the learning process."

Dr. Zindel Segal, who also worked on the study, hopes it will become a common treatment for depression.

"It moves it into the mainstream of treatment so that people will have greater confidence."

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy Clinic at University of Toronto: 416-535-8501 ext. 4877

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