Depression is a mental condition that can negatively affect the life of a person. For example, it can affect a person’s eating and sleeping patterns, career and education, concentration, health, and relationships. The condition can also be accompanied by comorbid illnesses, such as substance or alcohol abuse. It is vital to treat depression because untreated depression can result in other complications in future. Quick recovery for depressive patients is not possible because several strategies are required to deal with the condition. Depression does not just involve sad feelings because it has many other symptoms.
The present paper examines depression and its role in people’s lives. It also discusses how different counseling skills can be used to help clients with depression.
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Research suggests that Depression is both the most prevalent psychiatric condition and the most researched condition (Kanter, Busch, Weeks, & Landes, 2008). The condition has substantial effects on people’s well-being and quality of life (DiMatteo, Lepper & Croghan, 2000). It is normal for people to feel sad regularly in their lives but depression does not involve the normal sad feelings. Depression involves severe sadness and hopelessness that extends for a long period. The condition interferes with a person’s daily life activities, with the potential to result in physical pain (Kanter, Busch, Weeks, & Landes, 2008). Other symptoms include suicidal thoughts, appetite changes, and anger, withdrawal from family and friends and changes in sleep patterns (Kante et al., 2008).
Depression, which is also called clinical depression or major depressive disorder, is the most prevalent psychological disorders in America. Research shows that approximately 15.7 million adults in America in 2014, which is nearly 6.7 per cent of the adult population, suffered from at least one major depressive episode (NIMH, 2017).
Studies demonstrate that several factors including social, environmental, biological, genetic, and psychological, cause depression (Allen & Badcock, 2003 and Kanter et al., 2008). The risk of suffering from depression increases for people with a family history of the condition and for people with chronic diseases, such as cancer or heart disease (Allen & Badcock, 2003). I know I should not be taking this on a personal level but I solely believe that stress, trauma, and other significant life changes have the potential to lead to episodes of depression even though studies demonstrate that depression can also emerge without any outside cause.
Being depressive does not mean that a person is weak. Recovering from depression also takes time. The condition entails severe mental suffering that necessitates professional management. It is documented that with the right care, people will feel better. I am not a supporter of medications in the management of depression, but the technique has proven to be a benefactor in some more severe cases (Antonouccio, Thomas & Danton, 1997). Psychotherapy is also an effective treatment that I highly support and recommend because the psychotherapy produces positive and lasting results that protect an individual against symptom recurrence after completing treatment (Antonouccio, Thomas & Danton, 1997).
There are several approaches to therapy that different counselors can use when dealing with clients with depression (Antonouccio, Thomas & Danton, 1997). Therapists design tailored management plans by working closely with their clients to address the clients’ unique concerns and needs. Through psychotherapy, clients can learn how to deal with stress and control their depressive symptoms (Antonouccio, Thomas & Danton, 1997). These approaches enable patients to recover and function as normal people.
People with depression also require counseling. Relationship building is a vital aspect of the counseling process. Several conditions must be met to establish a functional therapeutic relationship with the client. They are correct empathy, congruence or genuineness, respect or positive regard, and open-ended questions.
The important thing during the counseling process is the perception of the client about the relationship.
The counselor should first engage in behaviors that facilitate relationship building, which can be achieved by focusing on attending to both verbal and nonverbal behaviors of the client. Attending to these behaviors involves engaging in natural eye contact to demonstrate to the client that the counselor is listening to him or her, leaning slightly and in a relaxed way towards the client to shift focus to the client and listen to him or her, maintaining positive nonverbal messages, maintaining positive facial expressions, such as raising the eye-brows or smiling when appropriate to demonstrate responsiveness, and commenting or asking questions based on the topics offered by the client.
The counselor should also paraphrase the content of the client’s communications by stating what the client says with fewer words and without changing the meaning of the stated words. When using this skill, the counselor attempts to comment on the core of the client’s message. Paraphrasing allows the client to know that the counselor is listening and understand his or her message, and helps the counselor to verify confusing messages, highlight issues, and confirm the correctness of his or her views. The objective of paraphrasing is to enable the client to continue talking without being interrupted while allowing the counselor to demonstrate to the client that he or she is listening and understands the client.
Paraphrasing should be accompanied with a reflection of the client’s implicit messages and feelings. Reflection entails describing correctly the affective state of the client based on nonverbal or verbal cues. Reflection is achieved by listening for and reacting to the client’s emotions to sense the client’s world as he or she perceives it. Reflection encourages the client to be more self-aware and self-understanding.
It is crucial to maintain genuineness or be real during the interaction with the client. Genuineness entails being authentic in behavior, internal emotions, and in words. Being genuine enhances the counselor’s trustworthiness, which is useful in establishing an effective therapeutic relationship with the client. Genuineness also encourages the client to express his or her feelings and thoughts freely and to be his or her true self. Being genuine also involves having an unconditional positive regard of the patient. Unconditional positive regard towards the patient can be achieved through caring for the client genuinely by approving of the patient even if the counselor does not approve of specific client behaviors. Having an unconditional positive regard of the client also entails accepting the client as he or she is to improve the effectiveness of the therapy. Unconditional positive regard means that the counselor does not judge or evaluate the behaviors, emotions, or thoughts of the client as bad or good.
It is also important to ask questions to open new discussion areas. Questions are useful in pinpointing an issue and in helping to clarify ambiguous information. The questions should be open-ended to offer the client a chance to explain more about a topic. Open-ended questions assist the client to view the extensiveness of his or her issues to gain insight.
Conclusion
Depression is a serious condition that impacts people’s lives negatively and requires immediate treatment. Studies have identified several treatment strategies for depression, such as medications and psychotherapy. Psychotherapy has been identified as an effective treatment for depression due to its lasting positive effects. Medications can also be used effectively for severe depression cases. Counselors can also establish a functional and therapeutic association with the client by using skills such as correct empathy, congruence or genuineness, respect or positive regard, and ask open-ended questions.
References
Allen, N. B., & Badcock, P. B. T. (2003). The social risk hypothesis of depressed mood: Evolutionary, psychosocial, and neurobiological perspectives. Psychological Bulletin, 129 , 887–913.
Antonouccio, D. O., Thomas, M., & Danton, W. G. (1997). A cost-effectiveness analysis of cognitive behavior therapy and fluoxetine (Prozac) in the treatment of depression. Behavior Therapy, 28 , 187–210.
DiMatteo, M. R., Lepper, H. S., & Croghan, T. W. (2000). Depression is a risk factor for noncompliance with medical treatment: meta-analysis of the effects of anxiety and depression on patient adherence. Archives of internal medicine , 160 (14), 2101-2107. doi:10.1001/archinte.160.14.2101
Kanter, J. W., Busch, A. M., Weeks, C. E., & Landes, S. J. (2008). The nature of clinical depression: Symptoms, syndromes, and behavior analysis. The Behavior Analyst , 31 (1), 1-21.
NIMH. (2017, November). Major Depression. Retrieved November 23, 2018, from https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/major-depression.shtml
