There has been no end of bad press for the scourge of text messaging. You can hardly listen to the news or read a newspaper without stumbling upon some other negative consequence of texting. There are clearly some issues with text messaging, from the danger while driving to the inordinate amount of time some people spend doing it. So, finally, texting has found a little bit of positive news in a pair of studies out recently. Text messaging helps smokers break the habit:

"Text messaging may be an ideal delivery mechanism for tailored interventions because it is low-cost, most people already possess the existing hardware and the messages can be delivered near-instantaneously into real world situations," said the study, which is scheduled to appear this week in Health Psychology, the journal of the American Psychological Association.

There is so much value in getting therapy out of the office and this study highlights why it is key. Behavior change needs to occur in your context, not in the context of a therapy room. We like immediate gratification and if there's some way to help with that immediacy, treatment is going to be much more likely to be successful.