Learn This Guide to Depression Counseling

How Can Counseling Help Depression?

Professional counseling can help depressed people take control of their symptoms and get back on track to achieving their goals. Skilled counselors take the whole person into account, not just the diagnosis of depression. That means that mental health providers treat your mood experience as unique instead of taking a one-size-fits-all approach to therapy. 

In your first counseling sessions, your provider may want to discuss the following elements to get a better sense of your struggle and how they can help:

• Your specific depression symptoms
• Your and your family’s medical history 
• Potential causes of your depression
• Your psychosocial environment
• Lifestyle factors (nutrition and exercise habits)
• Your needs and goals for treatment

This comprehensive therapeutic assessment may not take place all at once, especially when clients are in acute distress, but it’s important for your provider to gather as much information as possible over time. This can help a counselor develop an effective treatment plan that’s personalized around your needs. Providers utilize a number of evidence-based treatment options to help their clients live happier, healthier lives. Recovery might include weekly sessions with a therapist, monthly follow-up sessions with a psychiatrist, or support as needed if episodes reoccur. It all depends on what’s best for the individual.

Which Type of Therapy Works Best for Major Depression?

The most successful kind of therapy for treating depression is always determined by the client.

Having said that, there are various evidence-based techniques for treating mood disorders.

These modalities can be employed independently or in combination.

• Psychotherapy (an umbrella term for any talk therapy approach)
• Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
• Psychiatric medication like antidepressants 
• Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT)
• Mindfulness
• Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)
• Lifestyle interventions addressing nutrition, nature, and exercise
• Meditation
• Gratitude practices
• Art/creative therapy
• Self-care and self-compassion
• Solution-focused therapy (SFT)
• Trauma therapy
• Family therapy or couples counseling
• Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR)
• Light therapy
• Person-centered psychotherapy (talk therapy)
• Strength-based approaches
• Psychosocial interventions to find community support for the depressed person