Depression

Depression: The Therapist’s Toolkit

• Depression, the most common mood disorder, probably affects a majority of people who seek psychotherapy–whether they come in for depression or not.
• Therapists who have only one or two treatments in their toolkit will successfully treat only about 2/3 of their depressed clients.
• Depression in children: how it looks different than adult depression.
• Is combination therapy–meds plus therapy–really the best treatment for depression?
• A wider variety of therapies and non-pharmacological treatments than ever before have been proven effective for treating depression.
• Successful therapists match the best treatment to each individual depressed client. Therefore, it follows that the therapists most successful at treating depression will have the widest repertoire of treatments and ideas.
• Pregnant women and new mothers are often at increased risk for depression.
• Research has shown that, at times, it is hard to distinguish antidepressant withdrawal from the return of depression. They can seem the same with unfortunate and even disastrous consequences for your clients.
• Depression is also caused by situational factors, such as external threat and stress, racism, pace of life and many other environmental factors.
• Depression can be rooted in people’s inability to deal with existential issues, such as grief and lack of meaning, or in people experiencing a spiritual void.
• To escape depression, expert suggest, get out of the head and into the gym.
• As a biopsychosocial disorder, depression has many different causes and symptoms. Learn about them from behavioral, psychodynamic, existential and biological perspectives.
• Research has shown that relationship-based and psychodynamic therapies work as well as CBT.

This course will teach you to:

• The different approaches to the etiology and treatment of depression.
• To distinguish antidepressant withdrawal from the return of depression as they can seem the same, and to read pharmaceutical research without being misled.
• How effective are antidepressants?
• How do you weigh the risks and benefits of antidepressants?
• What’s the story on omega-3 (fish oil) and St. John’s wort?
• Should you use cognitive therapy, behavioral therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy? Or none of them.
• How new mothers’ depression affects their infants.
• How to access and use self-help resources for your depressed clients.