Treating depression

Apart from medication, psychotherapy too plays an important role in treating depression. Although medication is one of the cornerstones of treatment of Major Depression, psychotherapy plays an equally important role. A review of the research literature reveals that with a combination of medication and psychotherapy, most people with depression recover completely and are able to approach their lives with a fresh enthusiasm that seemed so elusive when they were down in the dumps. The talking cure Psychotherapy, which has been described by one of Sigmund Freud's patients as "the talking cure", has evolved considerably over the last few decades and today a bewildering plethora of psychotherapies exist, ranging from the more pragmatic approaches to the more esoteric ones. The basic object of psychotherapy is to help us understand what's happening in those parts of our mind that are not readily accessible to us. Or put differently, what precisely our thoughts are doing to our feelings, and our feelings to our thoughts. One form of psychotherapy, called psychodynamic psychotherapy, helps people to create a better life for themselves by understanding their past experiences and helping them deal with these. It can and does help people when they recover from depression. But, of the different psychotherapies available, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy or CBT it is popularly known, is the best researched and probably the most valuable when it comes to treating people going through a depression.