Depression - Effective treatment of

As a therapist I see a large number of people with depression / anxiety related problems. My job is to guide the person, to place them in the right state of mind to tackle some of the underlying issues and to teach various techniques of relaxation and visualisation, if it's appropriate.

Each person is different. Each client I see with depression will have different symptoms. Each person will have a different pre-morbid condition - in other words how we've dealt with past situation and how long these have been present will determine whether it will take a long or a short time.

Using a mix of Mindfulness - which allows people to focus on the here and now and not to spiral into a day dream of worrying, of Solutions Focused work, where we look at what you've achieved in the past, and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for helping people understand the thinking behind depression and how to change it. All tied up with hypnosis, which helps quiet down the amygdala and kick start the anterior cingulate cortex - where we look for novelty, change and make decisions. When this happens we're more likely to understand the problems and come up with solutions to them.

Use medication prescribed by your GP if you feel it may help the process, it will not interfere with the therapy, infact in chronic cases the two work effectively together - see case studies.

Less effective treatment

Talking about it may help you focus on the problem but not help you resolve it. It's been shown that trying to look in the past for what may have triggered it quite often is not very effective - see false memory, and past life regression.

Also see > Depression intro / Pathology of depression / symptoms of depression / hypnotherapy / coginitive behavioural therapy / mindfulness/ drugs or anti-depressants / finding a therapist / case studies