This practical and comprehensive guide demonstrates the essential interpersonal skills and techniques - including reflecting, paraphrasing, summarizing and empathy - which can be used to counsel the depressed person. The book explores the complexities of the depressive experience and examines the central issues of abandonment, sense of failure, powerlessness, shame and guilt inherent in the nature of depression. Paul Gilbert illustrates the absolute need for the counsellor to be aware of the fragility and negativity of the depressive state and focuses on the importance for both client and counsellor of the therapeutic relationship and the role of the guided discovery. Using carefully chosen illustrations and case examples, Gilbert traces the steps appropriate at different stages in the counselling process and shows how the counsellor can help the client to change, and to take over the whole method of change, in order to cope independently. A final section looks at the special problems which arise in depressed clients.