Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy handout

When you have been depressed in the past, your doctor may have prescribed antidepressant medication. This works through changes in the chemical messengers in your brain. In depression, these chemical messengers have often become abnormal, lowering mood and energy levels, and disturbing sleep and appetite. Correcting these brain chemicals may have taken time, but many people improve after six to eight weeks.

Although antidepressants generally work well in reducing depression, they are not a permanent cure; their effects continue only so long as you keep taking the pills. Your doctor can continue to prescribe antidepressants for months or years, and this is now recommended for patients if further depression is to be prevented with medication.

Whatever caused your depression in the first place, the experience of depression has a number of after-effects. Once you have been depressed, you are likely to become depressed again. The purpose of these classes is to improve your chance of preventing further depression. In the classes, you will learn skills that will help you to handle your thoughts and feelings differently.

Since many people have had depression and are at risk for further depression, you will learn these skills in a class with up to a dozen other people who have also been depressed and treated with antidepressants. In eight two-hour sessions, the class will meet to learn new ways of dealing with what goes on in our minds, and to share and review experiences with other class members.

We will work together to change the patterns of mind that have often been around for a long time. These patterns may have become a habit. We can only expect to succeed in making changes if we put time and effort into learning new skills.

The classes and home practice assignments can teach you how to be more fully aware and present in each moment of life. The good news is that this makes life more interesting, vivid, and fulfilling. On the other hand, this means facing what is present, even when it is unpleasant and difficult. In practice, you will find that facing and acknowledging difficulties is the most effective way to reduce unhappiness in the long run. It is also central to delaying or preventing further depression. Seeing unpleasant feelings, thoughts, or experiences clearly as they arise means that you will be in better shape to "nip them in the bud," before they progress to more intense or persistent depressions.

Because we will be working to change well-established habits of mind, it will mean putting in a lot of time and effort. The effects of this effort may only become apparent later. In many ways, this is much like gardening—we have to prepare the ground, plant the seeds, ensure that they are adequately watered and nourished, and then wait patiently for results.

You may be familiar with this pattern from your treatment with antidepressants—often there is little benefit until you have been taking the medication for some time. Yet improvement in your depression depended on you continuing to take the antidepressant even when you felt no immediate benefit.