Treating Depression with Motivational Interviewing

This course builds on the foundational understanding set in the course, “Motivational Interviewing: The Basics”. As its name suggests, the Basics course examines the spirit of motivational interviewing, covers the main principles of motivational interviewing, and goes through the stages of change, showing how to elicit change talk in clients. Unless you are very familiar with the principles and specific techniques of motivational interviewing, you must do the Basics course before embarking on this one. This course explores why, as mental health practitioners, we might be interested in a therapy such as motivational interviewing to treat depression, and what the research says about its effectiveness with this disorder in several typical clinical situations, such as when it is comorbid with other conditions and/or when the motivational interviewing is combined with other approaches. We follow up the explanation of general principles from the Basics course with a specific application of those principles to depression in this course. Upon successful completion of the course, you will be able to: Define motivational interviewing and explain its chief applications; Cite the DSM-5 definition of depression; Describe the results from four major meta-studies examining motivational interviewing which include outcomes related to depression; Construct a sample agenda for a brief course of motivational interviewing for a depressed client.