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Depression Relief: Understanding the Three Phases of Interpersonal Therapy (IPT)
Depression often develops after something goes wrong in your relationships — a death, a major conflict, a life change that affects how you connect with people. Then depression makes it even harder to handle relationships, creating a downward spiral.
Interpersonal therapy (IPT) helps you solve the specific relationship crisis that triggered or maintains your depression. At Mind Space Wellness, LLC, Caroline Bjorkman, DO, uses IPT’s three-phase approach to help you resolve these interpersonal problems and lift depression symptoms.
Depression and relationships feed off each other
When you’re depressed, keeping up relationships gets harder. You might pull away from friends, struggle to communicate your needs, or feel like you’re letting everyone down. Then those relationship problems make you feel worse, and the cycle continues.
IPT recognizes that improving these relationships can also boost your mood. Instead of spending months figuring out why relationships are hard, IPT changes how they work right now. Most people need 12-16 weeks to see real changes.
Phase one highlights what needs to change
During your first few sessions, Dr. Bjorkman reviews your depression symptoms and conducts an interpersonal inventory — a detailed look at your important relationships.
She examines how you communicate, where you get support, what your romantic life looks like, and which relationship conflicts might be triggering depression. The goal is to connect your mood to specific relationship problems.
IPT focuses on four main relationship issues:
- Grief
- Role disputes (when you and someone else have different expectations)
- Role transitions during major life changes
- Interpersonal deficits when relationships consistently feel difficult
Dr. Bjorkman selects a specific area to focus on. Trying to fix everything at once doesn’t work in 12-16 weeks.
Phase two teaches you new relationship skills
Sessions 4-13 focus entirely on the relationship problem Dr. Bjorkman identified. She uses specific techniques for each issue instead of generic relationship advice.
If you’re grieving, you’ll work on processing the loss while building new connections. Role disputes require better communication and realistic expectations. Role transitions mean mourning what you’ve lost while learning skills for your new situation. Interpersonal deficits focus on basics like starting conversations or expressing emotions.
Dr. Bjorkman helps you determine what you want from relationships, then builds realistic strategies to get there. If your goals aren’t doable, you’ll work through disappointment instead of chasing impossible outcomes.
Phase three prepares you to succeed on your own
The final 2-3 sessions review your progress and prepare you for therapy to end. Dr. Bjorkman helps you see the changes you’ve made and identifies warning signs that depression might return.
Ending therapy becomes practice for handling other relationship changes. Since people with depression often struggle with transitions, ending therapy successfully builds confidence for future challenges.
IPT works best when relationships affect your depression
IPT produces the best results when your depression springs from relationship problems. Research shows it works particularly well after major life changes, relationship conflicts, or grief. If your depression seems unrelated to interpersonal issues, other approaches might help more.
We often combine IPT with medication and other types of psychotherapy, especially for moderate to severe depression. Medication can reduce symptoms enough that you can do the relationship work IPT requires.
At Mind Space Wellness, Dr. Bjorkman adapts IPT techniques to your specific relationship patterns while coordinating any medication treatment.
If relationship problems contribute to your depression, contact our offices in Fort Lee, New Jersey, or the Upper West Side of Manhattan to schedule an appointment with Dr. Bjorkman and our team.