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Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) is a form of brief psychotherapy, developed for the treatment of depression. Controlled outcome trials have demonstrated its efficacy in the treatment of acute depression in psychiatric outpatient settings, in primary care settings and with special populations such as depressed adolescents and depressed elderly patients. In the depressed elderly IPT has the advantage, compared to antidepressant medication, of producing fewer side-effects and fewer drop-outs from treatment. Continuation/ maintenance treatment with IPT (IPT-CM) appears to be effective in reducing relapse rates of patients with an established history of recurrent depression (Markowitz 1998).
A standardized manual for IPT for depression is widely available (Klerman et al. 1984). This was developed for use in controlled treatment trials, carried out by the National Institute of Mental Health in the USA. The initial two to three sessions (‘initial phase’) consist of an assessment which includes, first, a detailed review of depressive symptoms and, second, the ‘Interpersonal Inventory’, a detailed review of past and, particularly, all current relationships. On the basis of this assessment the