Coping with depression

BUY YOURSELF FLOWERS

  • Instruction in self-change skills

    Pinpointing the target behavior and recording its baseline rate of occurrence; discovering the events or situations that precede the target behavior and the consequences

  • Relaxation training

    Learning progressive muscle relaxation to handle the anxiety that often accompanies depression; monitoring tension in daily situations and applying relaxation techniques

  • Increasing pleasant events

    Monitoring the frequency of enjoyable activities and planning weekly schedules so that each day contains a balance between negative/neutral activities and pleasant ones.

  • Cognitive strategies

    Learning methods for increasing positive thoughts and decreasing negative thoughts; for identifying irrational thoughts and challenging them; and for using self instructions to help handle problem situations.

  • Assertiveness training

    Identifying situations in which being non-assertive adds to feeling of depression; learning to handle social interactions more assertively via modeling and role playing.

  • Increasing social interaction

    Identifying the factors that are contributing to low social interaction (such as getting the habit of doing things alone, feeling uncomfortable due to few social skills); deciding an activities that need to be increased (such as calling friends to suggest getting together) or decreased (such as watching television) in order to improve the level of pleasant social interaction.

    Taken from Hilgard's introduction to psychology