We all have faced depression in our lives. Some people have been fortunate to have faced only a mild form of depression while others have not been so lucky and faced a more severe type of depression. For such people the treatment might lie in psychotherapy.
Psychotherapy is the treatment that employs talking as the primary function. During psychotherapy there is minimal usage of medicines.
Psychotherapy can be Cognitive Behavior Therapy or Interpersonal Therapy.
The most widely used therapeutic strategy is the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. This therapy involves recognizing destructive patterns of thinking, then modifying or replacing these with more realistic or helpful ones. It also involves creating an environment whereas the patient feels comfortable.
The patient works together with the therapist to become aware of the causes of his/her depression. The patient is asked to note down the negative thoughts that happen to him or her during the course of the day. This way the therapist will know how often such thoughts come to the mind of the patient.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy lays emphasis on discussing the negative thoughts and the behaviors that leads to them. This kind of therapy focuses on reconstructing the thoughts, by helping the patients discover reasons, intuitions, and perceptions, thus teaching them to use this discovery to manage their lives while thinking more positively.
Interpersonal Therapy is a short-duration treatment for depression related disorders. The main concern of this kind of treatment is usually on the individual’s social and other relationships.
The therapist’s aim is to help the patient with improving the way the patient interacts with others. When relationships break or run into a rough they directly have an effect on the concerned people.
Such turmoil in relationships can give rise to negative thinking leading to depression. This therapy helps to improve the inter-relational skills, communication, emotion expression, dealing with situations in social circles, etc. Although it is commonly used at individual level, it can also used for group therapies.
Most of these therapies that concentrate on an individual lay maximum emphasis on making the patient pro-active in his approach to daily life and treatment. The patient is supposed to do certain tasks at home or outside the therapy centre.
Although not much research has been done on psychotherapy, therapists use it worldwide as the first step for treating depression and related troubles. Medication should always be taken as the second step in treatment of depression.
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