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Therapy role-play · IPT
Interpersonal Psychotherapy ties depression to what is happening in the client’s relationships: a death, a dispute, a change of role, or isolation. You practise building the interpersonal inventory, a map of the people who matter in the client’s life, and then the harder discipline of keeping the work on one problem area.
Why this therapy
Depression often begins, or refuses to lift, around something that happened between people: a loss, a conflict, a big change, loneliness. IPT is time-limited and picks one of these problem areas to work on. Improve the relationships and the support, and mood lifts with them. The depression is named as an illness early and without apology, because that is what lifts the client’s self-blame.
Each protocol follows its published treatment model, and so does your feedback.
Simulated clients are a training aid. They do not replace supervised work with real clients.
Each one is reviewed in your debrief, with one concrete thing to try next time.
Map the important relationships in the client’s life. Names and ages are not an inventory; ask what each person expects, what satisfies, and what the client wishes were different.
Agree one focus with the client: grief, a role dispute, a role transition or interpersonal deficits (isolation). One. Three problem areas is a therapy with no focus.
Take one specific exchange and go through it line by line: what was said, what was heard, what else could have been said. “You two fight a lot” gives you nothing to work with.
Rehearse a conversation the client wants to have, with you in the other chair. Resist writing their lines for them.
Open every session by linking this week’s mood to what happened with people this week, in both directions.
Name the depression, tie its onset to an event in time, link it to one problem area, and check the client agrees before you go on.
The same client carries across modes. Start where you feel comfortable, then stretch.
Each client comes with a history, a presentation and measures. Read the referral as you would on placement, then begin.
The client responds to how you work. Make your mistakes here, where they cost nothing; hints come only if you ask for them.
A clear debrief on the core skills of your model (the CTS-R for CBT). Then take any one skill into a focused drill and work on it until it holds.
Mainly depression, including perinatal depression and adolescent depression (IPT-A).
Usually 8 to 16 weekly sessions, in three phases. The initial phase builds the interpersonal inventory and agrees the focus. The middle phase works on that one problem area. The ending phase prepares for the end, which is itself a transition the client should see coming.
Practise IPT with us
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