What is Interpersonal Therapy? - Types, Techniques, Effectiveness & Benefits

A crisis can occur at any point in life, which further contributes to stress, trauma, and depression. To cope with such instances, you must consider therapy sessions that are beneficial in boosting your mental health. An interpersonal therapy session is one such therapy that will help you to treat depression and related conditions.

Read this article to learn all about this therapy and the various techniques that come with it.

Interpersonal Therapy, or IPT is a psychotherapy that focuses on interpersonal relationships and works on social interactions. This includes analysing the amount of support you get from others and the impact all these relationships have on your mind. You require approximately 12 to 16 sessions in order to heal from such conditions.

Depression and anxiety affect your relationships and mental health, creating issues with your interpersonal connections as well. The idea of this therapy is that it helps in better communication with each other and addresses issues that lead to stress and depression.

There are four types of issues addressed during this therapy:

• Conflicts/Interpersonal disputes – These issues happen in a family, social circles, schools, workplaces, and marital relationships and occur due to differing expectations. Due to these expectations, conflicts arise and lead to distress.
• Role transition – You must adapt to changing circumstances. It can be shifting your workplace or might be an occurrence of any life event or the end of any relationship. As depression hits your mind, you feel these changes as losses which further contribute to the disturbance in mind.
• Loss through death – Grief or loss through death is a severe issue that becomes excessive and tends to last beyond the normal time. This is when depression happens, resulting in more grief and contributing more to the depression levels.
• Difficulty in relationships – Interpersonal therapy is also beneficial for those facing major challenges in relationships. This fear and grief of losing the connection and inability to move on results in acute depression.

After analysing these issues, a therapist counsels you helping you to adjust to the environment and the circumstances that have come your way. They allow you to cope with the problem, accept it and learn how to move on in life by adapting to the issue.

This therapy is conducted during the phase when you are going through major depression. However, it works as a maintenance treatment to prevent the issue's recurrence. So, people suffering from the following issues should consider taking interpersonal therapy:

• Borderline Personality Disorder.
• Bipolar Disorder.
• Treats depression and stress caused due to specific diseases.
• Treats Persistent Depressive Disorder or Dysthymia.
• Marital Conflicts and Disputes.
• Panic Attacks/Disorder.
• Depression as a result of caregiving.
• Treats Eating Disorders.
• Protracted Bereavement.
• Chronic Fatigue.
• Major Depressive Disorder.
• Multisomatoform Disorder.
• Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.

So now that you know what does interpersonal therapy focus on treating, you must regularly undergo these sessions. You will notice a change in your behavioural patterns. You will learn to deal with and adapt to the issues. This is a sign that you are coming out of depression.

If you are seeking treatment from a registered therapist, you must discuss about all issues you have been suffering from. There are several techniques of interpersonal therapy, but your therapist might use the one that is necessary for you. Here are the various types:

1. Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy

Also known as psychodynamic therapy, this remedy focuses on how you understand your feelings, desires, thoughts, and more. It further analyses how your thoughts, desires, and feelings affect behavioural patterns. This therapy is used to treat borderline personality disorder. Additionally, it treats specific mental health disorders that impact your thought process and feelings about yourself and others, which might cause daily life issues.

2. Metacognitive Interpersonal Therapy

This therapy helps to understand the basic social motives that might cause certain human behaviours. Through this therapy, you can analyse and understand your own feelings, thoughts, and beliefs, and the same of others too. Through metacognitive theory, you can overcome issues such as maladaptive social behaviours that include avoidance, withdrawal, and passive aggression. These generate from those feelings and thoughts and generally derive from any group setting.

3. Social Rhythms Therapy

This is an extremely effective therapy that treats bipolar disorder. It focuses more on the importance of regular eating and sleeping. Additionally, it adheres to the extent of social functioning, which involves helping people who have bipolar disorder and experience consistent mood swings. It helps these people to control, regulate and manage these symptoms. You can attend these therapy sessions apart from consuming medications.

Although all these therapies are structured at their best, every person’s therapeutic experience differs from the other. Therefore the effectiveness of interpersonal therapy will vary from person to person. This is because IPT is made to address specific mental health issues and depends on each individual's goals and needs.

Your therapist will try to understand the cause of such behavioural patterns by studying your manners. After that, they might follow specific techniques to understand which will work better for you. So here are the methods used in interpersonal therapy:

• Role-Play

Your therapist will engage you in conversational acts that will analyse how you communicate and share your feelings. You will need to regularly practise this technique to be prompt during real-world scenarios.

• Brainstorming

You and your therapist might come up with various ways to handle different relationships. Furthermore, as you delve down into the issue, your therapist will help you to decide your course of action on the same. This way, you will be able to make decisions on relationship matters.

• Discussing Interactions

Your therapist will ask you to discuss your interactions with other individuals to understand what went wrong or what was right. The more you discuss, the more you are confident enough to analyse your conversations with other people yourself. 

• Track Past Events

Although IPT never actually focuses on past relationship statuses and deals with the present scenario, your therapist might discuss your past relationship. This will help them to understand the way you dealt with or were related to those people in the past and if this is bothering you in the present and affecting your mental health.

• Empathetic Listening

One of the best techniques of interpersonal therapy is empathetic listening. Your therapist will listen to all you have to say, your feelings, thoughts, and wishes. The major cause of depression is when you fail to express your thoughts which affects your mental health. Your therapist will provide a comfortable space where you can share your thoughts and feelings.

Apart from all these, the techniques also include many structured assessments and interview sessions. This will help them to analyse if there is any change in your behavioural pattern. As you proceed with the development and attain more confidence, your therapist will let you deal with your issues then. During the final sessions, you will notice that you have become more independent in dealing with relationships and situations.

Interpersonal Therapy is an effective treatment procedure that is goal oriented and based on evidence. Therefore, this therapy will help you with the following:

• Attaining self-confidence: During depression and anxiety, you tend to lose your self-confidence. Through this therapy, you will gain belief and confidence within yourself and will be able to play a major role in decision-making.
• Responsible: You will become a more responsible individual and play responsible roles for others too. This will identify and shorten the gaps in relationships and will help you to analyse the common mistakes.
• Adapting to changes: Through regular sessions, you will adapt more to the changes that happen in your life. You will be able to deal with the grief and move ahead in life with a better and positive mindset. 
• Making good memories: You will be able to reflect more on good memories in your life, which will help you to strengthen and improve relationships. This might urge you to improve the connections and situations that were bitter.
• Dealing with issues: This therapy allows you to deal with your own issues in your way. During the depression, you are lost and thus unable to make correct decisions. This therapy will develop your mental strength to deal with complex matters.
• Understanding others’ beliefs and values: Through this therapy, you can deal with the beliefs and values of yourself and respect those of others. This will create a positive impact on any relationship.

Interpersonal Therapy increases confidence and helps you to trust yourself. With this therapy, you can:

• Identify issues: After attending the sessions, you will be able to identify the issues in your relationship or life. Then, you can share your problems, hopes, values, and beliefs with your therapist.
• Understand yourself and others: You will be able to understand not only your feelings but also of others. This will allow proper sharing of thoughts.
• Improve your communication: As you start sharing your thoughts, this enhances your communication skills. In addition, this helps you to deal with past trauma and put an end to it by sharing it with your therapist.
• Handle conflicts: You can identify the source of conflict and resolve the same through proper discussion and communication.
• Develop a positive mindset: As you progress towards development, you gain a more positive mindset and come out of the negative thoughts. This enhances your overall quality of life.

IPT has been extremely effective in treating severe depressive and mental disorders. However, these therapies work best when combined with medications. 

Recent research found that IPT can be used to treat major depressive issues and might be recommended as the first line of treatment for specific mental health conditions. Additionally, IPT also treats major depression, and conducting regular sessions might prevent the further occurrence of such disorders.

The following are the steps your therapist will follow while conducting the sessions:

Step 1: Your therapist will gather all information about your present conditions, after which they will decide on the technique.

Step 2: Since this is only the first stage, your therapist will get a clear picture of your mental health conditions and thus guide you through interpersonal discussions. They will list the important relationships in your life (interpersonal inventory). Then, they will try to understand how you are related to these relationships and try to identify the problem areas.

Step 3: Now, your therapist will focus on your treatment, which might include resolving conflicts or dealing with changes in relationships or grief due to sudden death. They will try to identify the reason that caused this transition.

Step 4: This is the middle phase of your therapy, where you learn various ways to communicate and share your feelings. Your therapist will also ask you to practice this during and after sessions. To guide this phase, your therapist might assign homework to you.

Step 5: Now, you and your therapist will analyse whether the earlier goals that you had taken are still to be considered. During this time, you might shift your focus to a new goal if you notice significant development in the earlier one.

Step 6: After a few sessions, you should be confident enough to use your new skills in real life.

Step 7: The final phase involves your therapist frequently checking on your progress.

The duration of this therapy depends on your current health condition and the severity of the issue. Furthermore, willingness to solve the problem plays a major role where you want to come out of this situation and lead a happy life. 

Depending on the situation, the sessions might take longer. However, this therapy commonly takes 12 – 16 sessions for you to notice a marked change in your behaviour.

Interpersonal Therapy (IPT) can be a valuable approach for managing depression, relationship issues, and life transitions. Here are some important points to consider before starting:

• Although IPT is an effective treatment option for depression, motivation plays a pivotal role. It is very difficult to change an individual if that person is not motivated or doesn't have the willingness to change. 
• You must acknowledge the requirement of your existence. If you are unwilling to analyse and address the role you play in the lives of your near and dear ones, you might suffer more.
• Be clear about what you hope to achieve—whether it's improving communication, coping with grief, or managing stress.
• Choose a therapist with whom you feel safe and understood, as trust plays a key role in therapy outcomes.
• Therapy sessions can be costly over time, so it's worth checking if your health insurance plan covers mental health services, including interpersonal therapy.