woman in outpatient therapy for depression
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Summary: Outpatient treatment can help people with depression in a variety of ways, including improved daily functioning and quality of life.

Key Points:

  • Outpatient treatment for depression may involve medication management with a psychiatrist only.
  • Outpatient treatment for depression may involve therapy or counseling with a psychologist or counselor only.
  • In many cases, outpatient treatment for depression involves both medication management with a psychiatrist and therapy/counseling with a psychologist or counselor
  • The goal of outpatient treatment is to reduce symptoms, help patients manage difficult emotions, and improve the ability to handle stressful and/or distressing situations.

When Symptoms Disrupt Daily Life, Outpatient Treatment Helps People With Depression Bounce Back

If you have depression, here’s what can happen. You can, or might:

  • Feel sad or low all the time
  • Lose interest in things you love most
  • Withdraw from friends and family
  • Lose motivation for work
  • Lose motivation for school
  • Stop eating well, exercising daily, and getting enough sleep
  • Stop attending to basic personal self-care, including personal hygiene

If you experience any of the things on that list, and feelings like sadness or loss of motivation persist every day for two weeks or longer, then we encourage you to seek a full psychiatric evaluation administered by a qualified mental health professional: they can listen to what you experience, arrive at a diagnosis, and offer a referral for an appropriate level of care.

If receive a diagnosis for depression and your symptoms are mild to moderate, meaning they’re uncomfortable, difficult to deal with, and degrade your overall quality of life, then you’ll likely receive a referral for outpatient treatment, where you see a psychiatrist or therapist once a week or every other week.

On the other hand, if your symptoms are severe, meaning they completely prevent you from going to work or school and make the basic tasks of daily life feel impossible, then you’ll likely receive a referral for residential treatment, where you live at the treatment center and take the time to focus on recovery without the distractions of family, school, or work.

While residential treatment may be the best choice for people with severe depression, outpatient can help people with depression that’s not as severe and debilitating and may be the best choice for people whose symptoms aren’t completely disruptive. Therefore, if you think you may have depression and wonder whether outpatient treatment can help people with depression, the answer is yes: outpatient treatment can help people with depression.

How Outpatient Treatment Helps People With Depression: The Components of Treatment

In most cases, outpatient treatment for depression involves five core components:

1. Medication, if necessary:

Antidepressants, such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), help people with depression by altering differences or impairments in brain chemistry that may contribute to the symptoms of depression. When medication increases the number specific neurotransmitters in the brain, many patients experience improved mood, more energy, and increased motivation/interest in things like school, work, or hobbies.

2. Psychotherapy and counseling.

Talking to a therapist, psychiatrist, or counselor can help people with depression by providing a safe space to explore thoughts, emotions, and behavior with a skilled professional trained in helping people with mental health challenges. The various types of therapy help people with different aspects of depression and different types of symptoms.

Two types of therapy common in outpatient treatment include cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT):

  • Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) helps patients understand the connection between thoughts, patterns of thought, and behavior. Through a process called cognitive restructuring, CBT can help patient resolve inaccurate perceptions/ideas – called cognitive distortions – that can exacerbate the symptoms of depression.
  • Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) helps patients understand the connection between emotion and behavior, and is effective for people who are highly emotionally reactive and have problems handling stress of tolerating distressing emotions.

There are a number of psychotherapeutic approaches available for depression, but CBT and DBT are the most common, and have the largest base of evidence supporting their effectiveness.

3. Lifestyle changes.

For people with depression or other mental health disorders, lifestyle changes are about improving overall health and taking basic steps to reduce stress. Lifestyle changes associated with improvements in depressive symptoms include:

  • Healthy eating
  • Exercise and activity
  • Sleep hygiene
  • Stress management

Outpatient treatment can help people with depression when a therapist offers options, support, and encouragement to make positive changes that can have a direct impact on things like mood, concentration, energy levels, memory, and overall health and wellbeing.

4. Education

During treatment, it’s important to learn as much as possible about depression and treatment for depression, but the educational component of depression treatment may also include classes and workshops in the following areas, among others:

  • Relationship/communication skills
  • Vocational support
  • Time management/basic life skills

5. Complementary modalities.

When treatment professionals use a secondary – or third, fourth, or fifth – mode of therapy in addition to primary treatment with medication or psychotherapy, it’s called complementary, because it helps add something to the overall treatment plan. To be clear, these therapies are in addition to, rather than in place of/instead of, first-line treatments like therapy and medication. Common complementary therapies include, but are not limited to:

  • Mindfulness
  • Meditation
  • Yoga
  • Acupuncture
  • Biofeedback
  • Stellate ganglion block
  • Experiential therapies, i.e. outdoor therapy, equine therapy (horses)

Complementary modalities help personalize treatment and give patients with depression more direct agency during and ownership of the treatment process, which can improve overall outcomes.

Outpatient Treatment: A Proactive Step Toward Healing

If you, a friend, or someone you love has depression, then finding effective, evidence-based support is essential. It’s important to understand that outpatient treatment can and does help people with depression. However, it’s equally important to understand that only a mental health professional can diagnose depression, and only licensed and qualified psychiatrists, therapists, and/or counselors can provide depression treatment.

If you think you may have depression, or if you think a friend or loved one has depression, we encourage you (or them) to arrange a full psychiatric evaluation. A mental health professional can help an individual with depression reduce symptoms, manage symptoms, restore full and productive daily functioning, and improve overall quality of life.