Your treatment team will help determine if therapy is a good treatment option for your particular situation. 

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a short-term therapy method for treating various conditions, including depression. CBT aims to identify thoughts, patterns, and beliefs that could negatively affect your life and address these patterns. 

CBT is a very goal-oriented therapy method that is focused on solving current challenges you are facing in your life. It is not focused on going deep into your past experiences. It is about analyzing everyday situations and giving you the tools you need to deal with what you are experiencing. 

With depression, CBT can help you recognize and change negative thought patterns and behaviors that are contributing to depression. CBT can work as well as medication for depression. CBT is often used alongside medication to treat severe depression. 

CBT was developed by combining traditional behavioral therapy with cognitive psychology, which studies how people think and process information. 

Behavior modification therapy is an overarching term to describe a broad range of techniques used to replace negative behavior patterns with the desired behavior. It is about replacing unwanted behaviors with more desirable ones.

Behavior is learned and is a product of conditioning. Behavior modification therapy can help you learn how to change your behavioral responses to different situations. This is based on the belief that some of your behaviors develop from things you learned in the past, but that impact your current life in a negative manner. 

The focus of behavior modification therapy is to learn how to change your behavior reactions to situations so that your reactions don’t cause you more distress. 

The focus isn’t on talking through unconscious reasons for your behavior. The idea is to provide you with direct behavioral changes that will help you right now by encouraging desired behaviors and discouraging undesired behaviors.

This can be really helpful if your depression is keeping you from doing necessary things in your everyday life, like going to work. Behavior modification therapy can help you address and change challenging behaviors that negatively impact your life. 

Behavior modification therapy is not normally a first-line treatment for depression, but it can be used to help relieve some of the symptoms associated with depression, like avoidance behaviors. It can also help with co-occurring issues, such as ADHD and OCD, which have some symptoms that overlap with the symptoms of depression. 

Supportive therapy is a type of psychotherapy that relies on a strong and productive relationship between you and the therapist. The therapy focuses on helping you deal with emotional distress and issues that impact your ability to live your everyday life. 

Supportive therapy enables you to deal with everyday life stressors that can be more challenging when dealing with mental health issues, such as treatment-resistant depression. It is designed to help you navigate through problems with empathy, compassion, and comfort. 

With supportive therapy, the therapist provides a safe emotional outlet for you. It is a space where you can express yourself and be yourself.

Interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) is a time-limited, focused therapy approach for depression. It focuses on addressing interpersonal issues and social functioning. IPT recognizes that interpersonal relationships don’t cause depression, but depression can impact and affect one’s interpersonal relationships. 

IPT addresses interpersonal issues as an effective treatment method for mild to moderate forms of clinical depression. It focuses on empathizing with how depression impacts a person’s relationships with their family and peers and providing support to one's interpersonal relationships. 

With IPT, you learn how to fix your life's problems right now to improve your quality of life immediately. 

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, MBCT, is a type of therapy that incorporates cognitive therapy, meditative principles, and mindfulness strategies together to help you better understand and manage your thoughts and emotions. 

MBCT has been shown to be particularly effective at helping people who have suffered from multiple episodes of depression. This is because MBCT can be used to treat people currently experiencing active depression and can also be used to prevent depression relapses in the future.

Creative arts therapy, also known as expressive therapy, uses art, music, and dance to help you cope with and process emotional issues. With creative arts therapy, the focus is on using creative outlets to help you express yourself. 

Creative arts therapy can help you explore emotional, social, spiritual, and cultural issues that may be influencing your depression. It can allow you to express yourself creatively and help build self-awareness, emotional well-being, healing, and self-esteem. 

At Options MD, we encourage you to pursue creative arts endeavors outside of formal therapy sessions. Your therapist can help you learn how to be intentional while engaging in creative arts pursuits in order to get the most out of these activities. 

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) was developed by combining mindfulness with contextual behavioral science to help you learn to accept your thoughts, feelings, and the present moment without judgment. 

The overall purpose of ACT is to help you put your energy into healing instead of dwelling on the negative when dealing with difficult emotions. You learn coping mechanisms to help you handle challenging life experiences. 

ACT can be an excellent treatment method for depression, as it provides you with tools to address difficult emotions and situations you face. 

The ultimate goal is for you to learn how to act in a meaningful way that positively impacts your life, even if that includes facing complex thoughts and feelings. 

Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) is a type of psychotherapy based on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) with more focus on managing emotions. DBT can be an effective treatment option for people who experience emotions very intensely. 

DBT helps patients recognize how thoughts can affect emotions and behaviors. It has proven to work well for managing a variety of mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety, suicidal behaviors, and certain personality disorders.

Psychodynamic psychotherapy is based on the idea that early life experiences impact your behavior and mental well-being. It is centered on the idea that your problematic repetitive thoughts and feelings are unconscious. 

The therapy you receive will help you become more self-aware of your thought patterns. You will learn how to take charge of your thoughts so that you can take charge of your life. 

Psychodynamic therapy is an in-depth form of talk therapy that is based on the work of Sigmund Freud. It is not as intensive and lengthy as traditional psychoanalysis, which can last for years. Its overall aim is to help you gain a deeper understanding of your emotions and mental processes, so you can understand why you think and feel as you do. 

This understanding allows you to make better life choices that bring you happiness. 

Finding the proper treatment when you have treatment-resistant depression can be challenging. Antidepressant medication is considered the first line of defense in treating depression symptoms. However, if you have treatment-resistant depression, you may need a more nuanced approach.

At Options MD, antidepressants are one of 200 treatment options our expert team will consider when putting together a custom plan for your treatment-resistant depression.

Options MD is here to help. Text us to start treatment now. Join our Facebook community to connect with other individuals with treatment-resistant depression.