Psychotherapy and depression

Professor James Potash concludes that any good treatment for depression does involve some element of psychotherapy.

As a general rule, any good treatment for depression does involve some element of psychotherapy, so even if a medication is going to help a person, on the one hand, people often need a lot of encouragement to take medication. Often they need to be talked through the advantages of medication, they need to be talked through getting over the stigma of being on medicine, they need to discuss side effects and most importantly they need help dealing with the fallout from the depression. Often, depression will have caused the blow-ups at work or strains in their marriage, and often they need some guidance in how to manage that.