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Interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) is a practical, intuitively reasonable treatment for depression. Readers new to IPT will find that much of what is described in this chapter sounds familiar and overlaps with other psychotherapies. Thus, 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 focus. Therapists who are used to less structured therapies may initially find it difficult to organize sessions around a specific IPT focus and to eschew the temptations of digressing into extraneous clinical material. 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 training experiences such as transference-focused interventions (for psychodynamic therapists) or identifying automatic cognitions (for cognitive therapists).
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