psychotip
Create accountLog in
Back to the resources
Depression & moodFor yourself50 min read

Behavioural activation: fighting depression

The treatment whose efficacy matches that of antidepressants in severe depression. The principle is explained in the opening pages, then put to work in eight steps: observe, spot the avoidance, choose, grade, plan, start, climb, consolidate.

In short

This programme is for someone going through a depression. It applies behavioural activation, one of the best-evaluated psychological treatments for depression. It comes in four parts: understanding the mechanism, following an eight-step programme, getting past the obstacles that make people give up, and dealing with everything around it — medication, suicidal thoughts, relapse.

Topic
Depression & mood
Who it's for
For yourself
Languages
FR · EN · DE · IT · ES · ZH · AR

Français · English · Deutsch · Italiano · Español · 中文 · العربية

The programme

If you are thinking about dying, or about hurting yourself, do not read this text now: talk to someone straight away. Contact your country's emergency services, a helpline, your doctor, or go to an emergency department. Tell someone close to you, even if it is hard, even if you feel ashamed. This programme is not an emergency service and does not replace a clinician. It supports care: if you have not yet seen anyone, reading these pages must not delay that appointment. Depression can be treated, and the suicidal thoughts it produces do pass — but they pass with help, not on their own.

1. Before you start

You wake up tired. The day is a wall. What you used to enjoy does nothing for you — you know it, you remember it, but the feeling no longer comes. Tasks pile up, and each undone thing becomes further proof of what you already think about yourself. You tell yourself you will get back to it when you have recovered a little energy, when you feel better, when the desire returns.

It does not return. That is the heart of the problem, and it is exactly what this programme targets.

The rest is for members

Create your access to read this programme in full, along with every other resource.

See the plansI already have an account

Printable worksheets

The exercises from this programme, as printable PDFs. Members only.

See the plansThe printable worksheets are included with access.
  1. 01The activity–mood logStep 1 — five to seven days of observation, changing nothing.
  2. 02My avoidance and the smallest alternativeStep 2 — trigger, internal reaction, avoidance.
  3. 03The activity inventoryStep 3 — chosen for what they give back, never to fill time.
  4. 04My activity ladderStep 4 — rated 1 to 10 by today's difficulty, not in the abstract.
  5. 05My planned weekStep 5 — one sheet per week. Reprint every Sunday.
  6. 06The starting sheetStep 6 — the hardest passage of the programme, and its technique.
  7. 07When nothing movesThe five checks, in this order.
  8. 08My relapse planStep 8 — one page, written while you are able to.

Every worksheet in one file, with a table of contents.

depressionbehavioural activationCBTmoodmotivation

You might also like

GriefChildren and teenagers

Supporting a bereaved child or adolescent

What a child understands about death at each age, the exact words for telling them, and the factor that best predicts how they will fare — it is not the one people assume, and it depends on you.

45 min readMembers only
Anxiety

Social anxiety: the eight-step programme

The problem is not that you are awkward: it is that your attention turns inwards at exactly the moment it needs to be outside. The mechanism, and the treatment with the best results in the whole anxiety literature.

45 min readMembers only
Grief

Grief: understanding it, getting through it, and knowing when to ask for help

The five stages do not exist, not falling apart is not coldness, and most people do not need therapy — but around one in ten stays stuck, and for them there is a treatment with demonstrated efficacy.

45 min readMembers only