ABSTRACT
There are few references to depression in the person-centred literature and yet most person-centred practitioners come across clients who describe themselves as `depressed' or who are referred to them because of `depression'. There are two main reasons why this is so. The ®rst is the person-centred resistance to diagnosis and the second is the person-centred belief that therapy is about responding to a person with unconditional positive regard and empathic understanding, not to a `problem'. From a personcentred perspective, when someone says they are depressed they are describing their subjective experience, not offering a diagnosis, still less one that requires responses of a particular kind. Moreover, although this subjective experience usually includes some or all of several emotional, cognitive, somatic, social and behavioural aspects everybody's experience of depression is different ± even the same client may not mean the same thing twice.
