Interpersonal therapy, often abbreviated to IPT, is a form of psychotherapy that focuses on the relationship between a person's interpersonal experiences and their mental health.
Fundamentally, IPT embraces the belief that humans are social beings and difficulties in relationships, such as conflict, loss or life transitions can contribute to psychological distress.
IPT focuses primarily on current relationships and recent life events, helping individuals understand how these influence their mental health.
It then utilises strategies to help people overcome their interpersonal difficulties, improve communication, and strength social support.
Key principals of IPT
Interpersonal therapy is a structured and time-limited psychotherapy programme. It aims to support meaningful change by supporting people to improve their interpersonal relationships and communication, focusing on the here and now.
Here are some of the key principles of IPT and how they apply to treatment:
Interpersonal inventory
A core component of IPT is the development of an interpersonal inventory. This involves exploring the important relationships in a person's life and understanding the quality and nature of those connections.
This helps the therapist understand the structure of their different relationships, their support system, and the difficulties that may be a cause or consequence of mental health challenges the person might be facing.
This inventory can help identify patterns and themes that recur throughout an individual’s relationships. By exploring these patterns, therapists can help people gain insight into how their experiences may be influencing current relationship dynamics.
While IPT acknowledges the impact of previous experiences, the primary focus remains on understanding and improving the function of current interpersonal relationships.
Interpersonal problem areas
As part of the IPT process, therapists sort current relationship difficulties into four areas. These areas allow the therapist to understand the relationships and how they relate to the mental health challenges a person might be facing.
By understanding how relationship experiences and life events relate to a person's mental health, therapists can tailor treatment to address the interpersonal factors contributing to their distress.
The four areas are:
- Grief and loss - Most often associated with the death of someone close to the person seeking therapy, or another significant loss that continues to impact emotional wellbeing.
- Conflict in relationships - This could be a conflict with family, friends, or someone in the workplace.
- Life changes - Adjusting to significant changes in life circumstances.
- Difficulties in starting or maintaining relationships - This commonly relates to difficulties expressing emotions, communicating needs, building social connections, or maintaining supportive relationships.
Time-limited and goal-oriented therapy
One of the key principles of IPT is that it should be time-limited and goal-oriented. This means that the therapist and the person attending therapy work together to identify interpersonal issues and then develop strategies to address them.
The sessions then follow a specific structure of around 12-16 weekly sessions:
- Initial sessions (1-3): The initial sessions of IPT involve collecting information and creating the focus of therapy. The therapist helps the person explore and map out their interpersonal relationships and group them according to key problem areas, which will become the focus of the sessions.
- Middle sessions (4-14): The middle phase focuses on problem areas with the therapist's support. Together they develop new strategies, strengthen communication skills, resolve difficulties, and apply these approaches in day-to-day life between sessions
- Final sessions (15-16): Finally, the person attending therapy and their therapist focus on reviewing progress, reflect on changes, discuss remaining challenges, and embracing the next steps after therapy.
Communication analysis
A therapist can support individuals to better understand and improve interpersonal communication and improve relationships by analysing how a person communicates.
This can include reviewing how a person communicated in a given situation and exploring how it might have been interpreted compared to their intended meaning.
They may then use coaching or role play to improve communication skills and draw attention to the person’s recurring challenges with communicating in different relationships.
By drawing attention to communication, a therapist can help clients clarify their feelings, thoughts, and motivations within their interpersonal interactions and use that clarity to better communicate with people in their lives.
This can help reduce psychological distress and improve overall wellbeing.
Who can benefit from interpersonal therapy?
IPT can benefit a wide range of people both during an acute period of mental health difficulty and as part of ongoing treatment to prevent relapse.
Here are a few examples of conditions that can benefit from IPT treatments:
- Depression.
- Anxiety.
- Eating disorders, such as bulimia and anorexia.
- Perinatal and postpartum depression.
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Does interpersonal therapy actually work?
The short answer is yes. Interpersonal therapy can be an effective technique that focuses on interpersonal relationships and communication to improve interpersonal relationships, better connect with others, and express feelings in more positive and helpful ways.
Studies have shown that IPT is effective for treating depression and may also be beneficial for conditions such as eating disorders, anxiety disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). For some people experiencing depression, IPT has been shown to be as effective as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).
IPT can be used as a stand-alone treatment, although some individuals may benefit from combining therapy with other approaches, such as medication, depending on their needs and circumstances.
Since it is a time-limited and goal-oriented programme, it is a practical, focused therapy that works on the here and now to get good outcomes in a realistic time frame.
If you are looking for a therapy that explores how relationships, communication, and significant life events affect emotional wellbeing, IPT may be worth considering as a treatment option.
Please visit our Talk Therapy page for more information on our online talk therapy service.
