How Effective Is Psychodynamic Therapy For The Treatment Of Depression?

Dr. Susan Stagno answers the question: 'Psychodynamic Therapy For Depression?'

ByABC News
March 10, 2008, 12:31 PM

— -- Question: How effective is psychodynamic therapy for the treatment of depression?

Answer: Psychodynamic therapy is a therapy that really is derived from the analytic model of therapy, one in which what we're looking for is people gaining insight about themselves, understanding how different behaviors have occurred.

This is a very helpful therapy to use with people who are depressed, but probably a better treatment in the therapy realm is what we call cognitive behavioral therapy.

In this kind of therapy, what we're looking at is how people view the world when they're depressed and the kind of thinking that they have.

People, when they're experiencing a depression, have a very negative outlook. Looking at the world through dark colored glasses.

And cognitive behavioral therapy is a very defined way of helping them take a look at their thinking, change their thinking patterns, change the way they see the world, change things in relationships.

And this has had a very, very good outcome in terms of research that we've looked at, in terms of therapy for depression.

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