ABSTRACT
Although the majority of the acutely depressed patients seeking treatment are successfully treated either pharmacologically or psychologically, or with a combination of both, the current concern is that many of these successfully treated patients will eventually relapse in the future. Clinicians are therefore beginning to make a concerted effort to prevent recurrence and relapse in their depressed patients. This chapter describes a multimodal psychological approach, named experiential cognitive hypnotherapy (ECH), to prevent recurrence and relapse of depression. Experiential cognitive hypnotherapy is based on principles derived from the extensive research literature on depression and from the experiences of using an integrated (combining cognitive-behavioral therapy, or CBT, with hypnosis) approach to treating depression for over 20 years.
