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Psychotherapy and Counselling for Depression
The Third Edition of Counselling and Psychotherapy for Depression is a popular and practical guide to working with people suffering from depression. As well as describing the skills and techniques used by practitioners, the book explores the features and complexities of depressed states including general negativity; sense of failure and abandonment; and feelings of powerlessness, anger, shame, and guilt. The Third Edition has been revised and updated and features a new chapter focusing on the role of the therapeutic relationship.
- GenresPsychology
424 pages, Paperback
First published May 16, 2007
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December 30, 2012
The best counselling textbook on depression I have read. This is a book for people who have a reasonable degree of prior knowledge about counselling and psychotherapy, but you don't need to be an expert.
I'm not a therapist myself. My interest comes from being a person who has wrestled with depression for many years, and have spent the majority of those years as a client. I also read widely to understand my mental "illness" and reckon that I've read well over 100 books on pyschology/psychotherapy/self-help/mental health topics which gave me the background knowledge to follow this technical book easily.
This is the best overall textbook on causes of depression & treating depression through talking therapies I've read (the medical/drug side of things is acknowledged but not explored as this book isn't aimed at medical doctors/psychiatrists). I found it so helpful to have the material of the many books I've read over many years structured & summarised in one place. For example I have found reading books on trauma memories personally helpful, as well as studying attachment theory and this textbook fits these into a coherent framework. The first part of the book is a look at understanding what depression is and what can cause it. The second part is how this understanding can be applied in counselling a depressed person, with case studies.
Paul Gilbert's central message is that depression is a complex and multimodal difficulty. There's no one solution that fits all. Therapists need to blend compassion, scientific knowledge and counselling techniques into a holistic client-centred interaction. Gilbert argues that at the core of the many different expressions of depression is the experience of feeling threatened, and that the use of warm compassion can help to dissolve the blocks that stop depressed people. This argument is backed by neuroscience research as well as many years of being a therapist.
Gilbert tries to avoid writing for one particular school of psychology or pyschotherapy and looks for common ground for all people involved in talking therapies. Students are encouraged to use the evidence-based research and insights in this book to fit into their own way of counselling whether CBT, behavioural, etc.
I strongly recommend that all counsellors, psychologists and psychotherapists working with depressed people to read this book.
I'm not a therapist myself. My interest comes from being a person who has wrestled with depression for many years, and have spent the majority of those years as a client. I also read widely to understand my mental "illness" and reckon that I've read well over 100 books on pyschology/psychotherapy/self-help/mental health topics which gave me the background knowledge to follow this technical book easily.
This is the best overall textbook on causes of depression & treating depression through talking therapies I've read (the medical/drug side of things is acknowledged but not explored as this book isn't aimed at medical doctors/psychiatrists). I found it so helpful to have the material of the many books I've read over many years structured & summarised in one place. For example I have found reading books on trauma memories personally helpful, as well as studying attachment theory and this textbook fits these into a coherent framework. The first part of the book is a look at understanding what depression is and what can cause it. The second part is how this understanding can be applied in counselling a depressed person, with case studies.
Paul Gilbert's central message is that depression is a complex and multimodal difficulty. There's no one solution that fits all. Therapists need to blend compassion, scientific knowledge and counselling techniques into a holistic client-centred interaction. Gilbert argues that at the core of the many different expressions of depression is the experience of feeling threatened, and that the use of warm compassion can help to dissolve the blocks that stop depressed people. This argument is backed by neuroscience research as well as many years of being a therapist.
Gilbert tries to avoid writing for one particular school of psychology or pyschotherapy and looks for common ground for all people involved in talking therapies. Students are encouraged to use the evidence-based research and insights in this book to fit into their own way of counselling whether CBT, behavioural, etc.
I strongly recommend that all counsellors, psychologists and psychotherapists working with depressed people to read this book.
Displaying 1 of 1 review