This course explores how depression is maintained by unhelpful thoughts and behaviours, and  teaches CBT interventions to help overcome it. Daytime and evening classes are available.

Available dates and registration are at the bottom of this page. For full guidance on attending our courses, please visit Online Group Classes.

Course outline

Week One: Introduction and First Steps

In the first session, we will cover the most common symptoms of depression, look at some case studies and introduce CBT techniques.

Week Two: Depression and Behaviour (1)

We will start to look at how your behaviour may have changed since becoming depressed, and how avoidance and putting things off can then keep the depression and keep it going. We introduce ‘Behavioural Activation’ and discuss how it can help us break this cycle.

Week Three: Depression and Behaviour (2)

This week focuses on how we can keep behavioural activation going and introduces two new techniques: a practical problem solving approach, and refocussing which can help us to stop ruminating and fully engage activities.

Week Four: Depression and Thoughts (1)

We turn our attention to the role of our thoughts this week, gaining an understanding of the role they can play in maintaining our depression. We introduce a technique to help us to identify these negative thoughts and discuss a number of common thinking errors.

Week Five: Depression and Thoughts (2)

Now we have learnt to identify our negative automatic thoughts, we introduce a technique which helps us to challenge these thoughts and change the way we think about situations.

Week Six: Maintaining Progress

In the final session, we make a plan about how we can maintain and build upon the progress we have made so far, re-capping the of the interventions covered in the course and discussing next steps.