Question: What Is the Best Form of Therapy for Depression?
Answer: One of the best is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which was originated by Dr. Aaron T. Beck back in the 50's. The principle behind it is that if we think something often enough we begin to belief in its truth. Depressed people are haunted by constant negative thoughts, called Cognitive Distortions, which are usually a gross distortion of reality. For example, a person may say, "I'm a failure at everything". If they examined the situation from a logical standpoint they would immediately see this is far from the truth. They may have not succeeded at few things, but they have many, many more successes than failures. For depressives, however, their past successes quickly fade from view and they concentrate only on the negative. What Cognitive Therapy teaches us is to avoid making this kind of logical error. It teaches us to reframe our thoughts about ourselves in a way that's more consistent with reality. When we begin to make more positive and truthful statements about ourselves on a regular basis we also feel better.
