| Abstract: | Describes depression in terms of pathological states and as a loss of status and suggests that this conceptualization has implications for what clients can and want to do to change in therapy. It is argued, as P. Ossorio (1985) suggests, that sadness, retardation of behavior and thought, motivational loss, anhedonia, and other symptoms of depression are best understood as restrictions on clients' abilities rather than as universal behaviors of depressed persons. Case examples illustrate the goal of status enhancement in therapy with depressed patients and the use of compensatory statuses with patients who cannot recover lost statuses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
