Depression Counselling

Yes. Seeing a counsellor can help individuals learn strategies to process and manage negative thoughts and experiences more effectively. In a safe and compassionate space, a therapist can support individuals in feeling comfortable sharing their inner thoughts and feelings without worry of judgment. This environment can foster positive personal growth, improvements in mood, and regaining interest and pleasure in everyday activities.

According to the American Psychiatric Association, depression is extremely treatable, with 80-90% of people eventually responding well to their treatment, which may include counselling alone or a combination of counselling and medication. There is strong evidence that counselling is at least as effective as medication in treating depression, and counselling tends to be a more effective long term strategy, because it provides you with mental tools to deploy if your depression symptoms ever return. One of counselling’s most important strengths is that it helps the client develop resilience in the face of adversity or suffering, enabling you to bounce back quicker.

Depression is a broad term, and there are many factors that will impact the direction your counsellor chooses to take in your session.  Most importantly, a good, experienced practitioner will be adept at attuning the session to your needs and allowing you to maintain a sense of control over your own treatment. Depression counselling is a bit of a journey, but will involve identifying triggers and sources in your life and developing the tools to essentially re-train your brain to cope with those issues better. 

Treatments that have a proven track record in the context of depression include, but are not limited to: 

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) CBT is an extremely effective method for altering the beliefs, ideas and behaviours that might be holding you back or triggering your depression. It focuses particularly on addressing and fixing the types of thought distortions that might lead you to believe or feel negative things, whether about yourself or about life in general.  

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) Encourages people to embrace their thoughts and accept them rather than struggling to resist them. It involves accepting the bad with the good, and while it can seem strange to start with it helps to build that ever-important resilience. 

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)  DBT is actually a form, or ‘offshoot’, of CBT, which involves developing healthy ways to cope with and regulate intense emotions, as well as improving interpersonal relationships. 

Schematherapy Schematherapy involves identifying your ‘schemas’, which are essentially your ways of viewing the world. Another way to think of a schema is as a lens through which you view yourself, your life or events, that tints or affects how you see things. By identifying schemas, you can understand more about yourself and recognise how your perspective on certain issues may be contributing to your depression. 

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) EMDR is an interactive therapy often used to treat trauma. It involves reliving triggering experiences in small doses while your counsellor directs your eye movements. It works to de-sensitise you to the triggering experience until you can learn to live with the memory and not be triggered by it. Mindfulness  Mindfulness is similar to meditation, although it lacks spiritual connotations and is used for practical purposes.

When practicing mindfulness, you work to focus on your awareness of the present moment, often through a combination of breathing practices and vocal guidance. It is extremely powerful in reducing stress and inducing a feeling of calm, which can help to put the rest of life into perspective. 1. Karyotaki, E. (2016) Combining pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy or monotherapy for major depression? A meta-analysis on the long-term effects. Journal of Affective Disorders.

Counselling for depression targets breaking the cycle of negative thinking in an attempt to re-regulate cognitive processing. A therapist will work with an individual to identify the patterns and environmental factors contributing to feelings of hopelessness and unhappiness and apply therapeutic techniques that change/challenge these. Different to treatments for anxiety or other psychological disorders, depression counselling works on rebuilding a foundation of esteem and positivity, while anxiety treatments focus more on physical symptoms (like panic) and learning strategies to manage physiological responses to stimuli.

Counselling can be highly effective in reducing symptoms of depression, leading to feelings of greater life satisfaction and general well-being. Psychological treatment plays a crucial role in treating depression in individuals, with substantial scientific evidence in support of therapeutic interventions. However, counselling success rates are contingent on many factors, such as a person’s commitment to therapy and willingness to adopt lifestyle changes. Generally, individuals will notice positive outcomes in their first 10-20 sessions with a counsellor, though long-term counselling may be required in more complex cases.