Recover from depression and build a fulfilling relationship
Couples Therapy for Depression
Relationships are so important to our overall wellbeing and yet sustaining a fulfilling and stable one is never easy.
Pressures from work, money, children, family tensions and ill health can all contribute to problems and lead to depression and other issues.
Depression meanwhile can make us feel alone and the feelings of guilt, worthlessness and low self-esteem that often come with it can chip away at our closest relationships.
Couples Therapy for Depression helps you to understand yourself and your partner better. It can help support you to deal with both the depression and the distress it causes – and help you get back to a feeling of closeness.
Couple therapy can help you with understanding::
- How depression affects both of you in your relationship
- Understanding your own and your partners emotional and practical needs
- What makes your relationship less satisfying than it could be
- Recovering from depression – by reducing the things that make partners feel alone and cause conflict and distress
- Breaking patterns of behaviours that cause conflict
- Feelings of anxiety and stress in facing the challenges of your relationship and family life
- Adjusting to life changes such as the arrival of children, bereavement or separation
- Finding greater confidence about the future
- Building a better sense of closeness with your partner
- Improving your sexual relationship if needed.
Everyone’s therapy will be a bit different. Working together with a couple therapist, you will talk about the issues that trouble you and your partner - and then find solutions to them.
- If your relationship has broken down or you can’t talk to your partner, meeting with a couple therapist can open the way to better communication.
- Your therapist will help you understand the ways that depression affects both of you, and how it is connected to the distress in your relationship.
- They will point out things that go on between you that you might not be very aware of, but which make your relationship less satisfying than it could be.
- Your couples therapist will not take sides, though they may sometimes feel challenging to one or other of you. They will make links between what you expect from a relationship, such as how you were brought up, and build on the strengths that you already have as a couple.
- You will explore new ways to relate to each other, gaining a greater understanding of, and learning communication and problem-solving skills if needed.
- For those who are suffering from depression, couple therapy helps by reducing the kinds of things that make partners feel alone and distressed, or which push partners apart and make them feel angry with each other.
- This improves your relationship by helping you both to work together to create more fulfilling relationship with a better sense of closeness.
- This positive cycle improves mood and emotional wellbeing – helping you to break out of repeating patterns of unhappiness in your relationships and a more stable family life.
The person who is experiencing the depressive symptoms should refer themselves to NHS Talking Therapies - or you can ask your GP or health professional to refer you.
Initially only the person experiencing symptoms of depression needs to refer themselves to us.
What happens next
We’ll offer you a general wellbeing assessment and discuss all the treatment options available to you.
Access to this type of therapy will depend on you and your partner's needs so unfortunately we can't offer treatments based on individual requests alone.
The therapist will look at your situation and define a treatment plan based on your current situation. This may not necessarily involve Couples Therapy if it is not suitable for you right now.
If your assessment does indicate that Couples Therapy could be helpful, then we will invite your partner to attend a Well-Being Assessment prior to meeting with a Couples' Therapist.
If you need further help for example, your therapist may recommend other treatments such as:
- Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
- Counselling for Depression (CfD)
- Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy (DIT)
- Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Depression (IPT)
- Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)
Find out how to refer yourself to NHS Berkshire Talking Therapies (visit the webpage)
Self help guides
We have self-help guides if you want to know more about managing things like depression and stress.