Textbook of Psychotherapeutic Treatments Part 3: Individual Interpersonal Psychotherapy / Section Editor: John C. Markowitz, M.D. > Chapter 11. Techniques of Individual Interpersonal Psychotherapy Sections: Techniques of Individual Interpersonal Psychotherapy: Introduction, Common Therapeutic Factors, Link Between Mood and Life Events, Blame the Depression, Phases of Interpersonal Psychotherapy, Conclusion, Key Points, References, Suggested Readings. Topics Discussed: major depressive disorder; psychotherapy, interpersonal. Excerpt: "Interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) is a practical, intuitively reasonable treatment for depression that incorporates strategies used in general psychiatric practice and thus has face validity for practicing clinicians (Weissman et al. 2000, 2007). Readers new to IPT will find that much of what we describe below sounds familiar and overlaps with other psychotherapies. Therefore, on one level, IPT demands few novel skills from therapists and is relatively easy to learn.The challenges of IPT lie not in any individual technique or strategy, but in organizing these approaches to establish and maintain a coherent primary treatment focus. Therapists comfortable with less structured approaches may initially find it difficult to organize sessions around a specific IPT focus and to eschew the temptations of digressing into extraneous clinical material. Moreover, therapists accustomed to more prescriptive treatments may struggle to balance the exploratory aspects of IPT with the need to stay focused. Additional challenges arise from "unlearning" reflexive responses from prior..." DOI: 10.1176/appi.books.9781585623648.370146 The content above is only an excerpt. For full access subscribe now or log into your account below. Username: Password:     Athens Login FORGOT your subscriber username and/or password? Get a reminder via email: The email I registered with is:  Not a subscriber? Subscribe Today PsychiatryOnline is a powerful website that features DSM-IV-TR® and The American Journal of Psychiatry as the cornerstones of an unsurpassed collection of psychiatric references, including books, journals, and self-assessment tools. PsychiatryOnline’s innovative platform makes these resources easy and convenient to use, offering Precise and powerful searching across books and journals. Quick pathways to related material. Mobile access from any computer with a Web connection. Ability to download any book section to PDA. Links from bibliographic references to the full text of journal articles. References to material not located in the PsychiatryOnline collection lead you to PubMed. Learn more about PsychiatryOnline Need more help? PsychiatryOnline Customer Service may be reached by emailing PsychiatryOnline@psych.org or by calling 800-368-5777 (in the U.S.) or 703-907-7322 (outside the U.S.).