“How would a humanist treat depression?”

There are different humanistic therapies though in general they share some common characteristics. For example, to understand a person, it is vital to understand that person’s subjective experience. The focus with humanistic therapy is on current behaviors (less so processing the past and figuring out where things started in your history). A believe that people have an innate desire to be well. The therapy stresses the importance of the alliance between the therapist and client to be authentic and collaborative. Finally, there isn’t a focus on traditional assessment techniques or a diagnostic label.
There is a lot of focus on personal choice rather than difficult upbringings or problems with how the neurotransmitters are firing in our brain.
I’ll give you an example with depression. William Glasser’s Reality Therapy (one of the humanistic therapies) talks about people having 5 basic innate needs: survival, love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun. He says that the love and belonging are most important because without them you don’t have the others. He believes most forms of mental health are a result from when we are unable to fulfill these needs in responsible ways or we infringe upon others to get our needs met. So from this perspective, a person is depressed because they have “chosen” to depress themself. So the goal of therapy here is to help the client identify responsible and effective ways to get their needs met and this is done through the use of asking open ended questions, encouragement, and other strategies that are designed to help the client explore and evaluate their behaviors, develop and commit to a realistic plan that will ultimately decrease the depressive symptoms and increase the clients level of feeling empowered and in control.

Hi,

Thank you for your question. Humanistic therapy, also referred to as person-centered therapy, was developed by Carl Rogers to help individuals access and understand their feelings, gain a sense of meaning in life, and reach self-actualization. It adopts a holistic approach to human existence and pays special attention to creative expression, free will, quest for spiritual enlightenment, the pursuit of knowledge, and human potential. It encourages self exploration of your true identity, personal growth, self-determination, and viewing yourself as a "whole person." Abraham Maslow was another humanistic theorist who emphasized the hierarchy of needs and motivations.

Humanistic approaches would look at depression as a disturbance in a person’s ability to grow to their full potential. Every individual holds the key to their own ability to facilitate change given the right conditions for growth and self-actualization. A depressed person can be helped if the core conditions of empathy, unconditional positive regard, and congruence are in place. If a depressed person experiences these conditions, healing can begin to take place in therapy. Each depressed person is seen as an individual with their own unique set of circumstances. Given the right interpersonal environment where real contact and connection can take place, depression can be lifted by the individual as the individual experiences more self-acceptance and self-worth.
I hope this has been helpful!

Best,

Jenna Torres, PsyD

A "humanist" is going to be a very client centered person. They should try to meet you were you are, demonstrate empathy to your situation and help aid in your own developmental growth and help identify triggers and situations that could be occurring that lend to your depression.

Take a look at this link for a comparison of therapies to depression including humanistic approach...
https://www.simplypsychology.org/depression.html