Behavioral Therapy
Behavioral therapy is used to counsel people with depression by focusing on the external behavior rather than the internal cognitive processes that stimulate the behavior. The key to this method of counseling lies in the fact that the person is depressed because of one's behavior, and that changing behavior will control the feelings associated with depression. Behavioral changes can produce quite significant results in some people, but it still leaves the underlying issues and causes of depression unexplored.
Cognitive Therapy
Cognitive therapy is the opposite of the behavioral technique. This form of counseling seeks to find the solution in patients' thought processes. Cognitive counseling seeks to change negative thoughts such as pessimism, hopelessness, self-criticism and unrealistic outlooks and expectations. The key to successful cognitive therapy is learning to distinguish between the really important issues affecting one's life and the minor or even trivial issues.
Interpersonal Therapy
Interpersonal therapy is a form of counseling that attempts to locate how social interaction affects depression. Interpersonal therapy does not try to place social contexts as a root cause of depression, but understands that the way that people react to others has a profound effect on the development of symptoms. This form of counseling extends beyond actual interpersonal behavior to take into consideration such things as fantasies, fears, anxieties and wishes as they relate to social interaction.
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is the form of counseling that is most often associated with treating mental illness; it is the counseling that brings to mind the Freudian psychologist listening to a patient lying on a couch. In reality, the therapist may not subscribe to Freudian theory at all. The purpose of psychotherapy is to get to the core of the causes of depression; as a result, every aspect of the patient's life is fair game. The patient who chooses this form of counseling needs to be very comfortable with and confident in the therapist and be unafraid to open up and discuss even the most painful and personal aspects of one's life.
Psychodynamic Counseling
Psychodynamic counseling is the type of therapy associated with Freudian techniques. This form of counseling differs from psychotherapy by placing the entire emphasis on the unconscious and subconscious thought processes. Rather than attempting to locate alternative causes, psychodynamic counseling seeks specifically to uncover unresolved conflicts that developed during childhood. The aim is to resolve these conflicts; if resolution is impossible, then the patient learns cope better with the conflicts.
Tags: form counseling, associated with, counseling seeks, counseling that, causes depression, form counseling that