Can Counseling Help with My Depression?

Depression is a common and serious mood disorder, with more than 15 million American adults estimated to have had at least one major depressive episode in the past year.

It can impact how you think, feel, interact with others, and carry out your daily life. It can lead to sadness and loss of interest or pleasure in things you used to enjoy. Anyone can experience depression, and it can occur at any age, but it most commonly starts during adulthood.

The silver lining is that depression is very treatable; it’s been reported that 80% to 90% of people respond well to treatment at some point.

The reason depression is so treatable is that you can find the solution in medications, psychotherapy, counseling, or a combination of all three. Finding the right psychotherapist who can guide you through and address the underlying causes of depression, as well as finding ways to cope with the symptoms, is often the first step to feeling better.

Therapy or psychotherapy is effective in treating both short-term and long-term depression. Like medications, therapy is not a one-size-fits-all service. More common evidence-based approaches include cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), interpersonal therapy (IPT), psychodynamic psychotherapy, and problem-solving therapy.

Counseling vs. Psychotherapy

Mild to moderate depression is often treated with a first step of “talk therapy.” This strategy is the route a lot of experts will take before resorting to medication. Severe depression will inevitably require some medication, and therapy and medication may be administered simultaneously. Before I bring you further, let’s explore the difference between counseling and psychotherapy.

“psychotherapy” and “counseling” are often used the same way. While they are closely related, it should also be noted that sometimes, psychotherapy with a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist (MD) is thought of more as a long-term method that focuses on depression and/or more serious topics that are having a significant impact on your life. Counseling, in contrast, is typically viewed as a shorter-term intervention that may concentrate more on mild to moderate symptoms and exterior functioning and behavior.

Depression Counseling

The length and severity of symptoms and episodes of depression usually influence the type of therapy.

If you have been depressed for a long time and the symptoms are more severe, you may need a psychiatrist or psychologist (PsyD) because they address more deeply rooted past issues in your present feelings. However, if symptoms of depression are newer or less severe, a therapist in a counseling relationship may be able to help.

In counseling, the therapist employs talk therapy to help you clarify the issues in your life that are causing distress and work through them. They listen, give feedback, and help you develop coping strategies. They will also measure your progress and adapt the sessions to match. You might be given homework that continues the learning outside of counseling sessions. Frequently, that’s as simple as tracking moods and feelings.

Counseling for depression is slightly less centered on your past and more centered on your present thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and how those things relate to your everyday life, which is why a model like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) has been such a helpful one to implement within counseling sessions.

In CBT, the therapist can help you change negative thoughts that might be fueling the symptoms of depression. It’s vision-driven, and you, the patient, are a partner.

Because CBT is typically short-term, it’s often the approach of first choice for therapists dealing with mild to moderate cases of depression that may not require long-term, intensive psychodynamic psychotherapy. CBT is known to be one of the best ways of treating depression. It also has been shown to lower rates of relapse or recurrence of depression after counseling has ended.

Another short-term method is interpersonal therapy (IPT), which looks at interpersonal conflict and lack of social support and how this can contribute to depression in counseling for depression. It can help you learn to communicate better, too, and to work through the things that make depression symptoms worse. If on-demand IPT may also help avoid new depressive disorders, it would be a promising adjunct treatment option, as evidence suggests that IPT is efficacious in the acute treatment of depression.

Next Moves

If you suffer from depression and don’t know who to contact, contact Healthy Families Albuquerque now at 505-842-9911 and make an appointment for depression treatment. We are here to help you!