Myrna Weissman, Ph.D. on Interpersonal Psychotherapy

Mental Help Net (www.mentalhelp.net) presents the Wise Counsel Podcast (wisecounsel.mentalhelp.net), hosted by David Van Nuys, Ph.D. "Myrna Weissman, Ph.D. on Interpersonal Psychotherapy", posted June 1, 2007. Dr. Weissman is one of the founders of Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT), one of only a few empirically validated (EV) and manualized forms of therapy existing today which has been designed for the treatment of depression. As the name suggests, IPT is based on the idea that depression symptoms exist as part of an interpersonal, relational context and cannot be understood independently of that context. In IPT, therapists help patients to talk about what was going on for them when their symptoms first appeared. They then assign the interpersonal context of the patients' depression to one of four categories: grief, conflicts and disagreements, life transitions or too-few attachments and help patients to identify ways to resolve those issues.