Supportive Psychotherapy For Depression Treatment

All patients need and deserve support and empathic understanding while they are depressed. Supportive psychotherapy helps by shoring up defenses, utilizing strengths, empathizing with distress, explaining the course of depression, monitoring changes, and reassuring the patient that improvement will, in time, occur. It also helps the doctor learn the effects of other treatments from the patient. With the patient’s permission, support and explanation should also be provided to family members, friends, and others important in the patient’s life. These individuals constitute a network of support more available than anything the doctor can provide. When other treatments are ineffective, support by caring others can sustain a person until depression resolves on its own with the passage of time. All doctors provide support to their patients. Family doctors often know patients best and are, therefore, a most important source of support.