A Brief Behavioral Activation Treatment for Depression:
Behavioral Activation (BA) Program
Treatment Manual
C. W. Lejuez1 & Derek R. Hopko2
University of Maryland, College Park1
University of Tennessee, Knoxville 2
Address Correspondence to:
C.W. Lejuez, Ph.D.
University of Maryland
Department of Psychology
College Park, Maryland 20742
clejuez@psyc.umd.edu
Session 1
Session One Key Elements:
1. Introduction
2. Discussion of Depression
3. Introduction to Treatment Rationale
• What about trauma and loss in your life?
• Why is coming every week important?
4. Introduce Daily Monitoring (Form 1)
• Importance and Enjoyment Ratings
5. Important Points about the Structure of This Treatment
Introduction
We will begin with a discussion of how you are doing and why you have come to therapy. It is important to have an opportunity to talk about your experience, thoughts, and feelings. Let’s spend some time hearing about what has brought you here today.
Based on your initial intake interview, it sounds like you are experiencing symptoms of depression. I would like to begin by discussing depression and how it can affect your life.
Discussion of Depression
Depression is defined as an extended period of time (at least two weeks) in which a person experiences depressed mood or a loss of interest or pleasure in activities that were once enjoyed. Many people will experience at least one episode of major depression in their lifetime. Although depression most often occurs between the ages of 25 and 45, it can affect people of all ages, cultures, income, education, and marital status.
For many people, the onset of depression clearly is related to stressful life events including a traumatic experience, loss of a loved one, financial difficulty, or job loss. For others, the specific causes of depression may be unclear, and it might start without warning. Whether it lasts a couple of weeks or as long as several years, depression may produce significant difficulties in life functioning (for example, an inability to work or take care of one’s children). Resulting problems may include decreased optimism/motivation, low self-esteem, trouble concentrating (paying attention), self-harm, and/or suicidal thoughts and behavior. Medical problems resulting from depression can include heart disease, chronic pain, drug abuse or dependence, fatigue, and malnutrition. Individuals with depression may isolate from others and/or withdraw from activities in life that may result in loneliness, relationship problems, decreased job satisfaction or unemployment, and educational failure. Given these resulting problems, the identification and treatment of depression is critical.
Depression can range from very minimal depressive symptoms to severe clinical depression. Some people have proposed that the development of depression symptoms is related to many factors that include behavior, the environment, cognitive (including thoughts, beliefs, and feelings), biological, and social influences. These factors may act independently or together to produce and maintain depressive symptoms. If depressive symptoms are severe, major depression may be diagnosed. Symptoms of depression may include:
1. Feeling sad or down most of the time
2. Loss of interest in usual activities
3. Significant weight loss or weight gain
4. A decrease or increase in appetite
Difficulty sleeping or sleeping too much
Feelings of agitation or irritability
Feeling tired or loss of energy
8. Feelings of worthlessness or excessive / inappropriate guilt
9. Difficulty thinking or concentrating or making decisions
10. Crying spells
11. Feeling hopeless
12. Thoughts about killing yourself or attempting to do so
Although most individuals experience some form of many of the above symptoms, these symptoms must either result in significant feelings of distress, or interfere with day-to-day functioning for a diagnosis of depression to be made.
Introduction to Treatment Rationale for Behavioral Activation
Behavioral activation (BA) is based on the idea that the best way to reduce your symptoms of depression is to become aware of the a) life areas that are most important to you, 2) the values you have in those life areas, 3) what activities you can do to live according to your values. For example, important life areas may include 1) your relationships, 2) your job, or 2) sports and recreation activities. Values in those life areas might be 1) showing love to someone you care about, 2) completing work duties with pride, and 3) become physically healthy. Once you have identified those life areas and values, we will use these life areas and values to identify and perform daily activities. This is important because when you become more active you are more likely to experience positive and enjoyable situations. It is difficult to feel depressed or and have low self-esteem if you are regularly doing activities that bring you a sense of pleasure and/or accomplishment.
This manual targets changing your behavior and your surroundings as a method for improving your thoughts, feelings, and overall quality of life. Many individuals with depression often feel tired and lack the motivation to do various activities and think that once they have more energy and think more positively, they will be able to do activities they have ignored or have been unable to accomplish. The opposite approach is taken in this treatment – behavior is changed first, which leads to increases in energy, motivation, and positive thinking and feelings. The focus on behavior change, however, does not mean we ignore thoughts and feelings. Instead, we suggest that negative thoughts and feelings will change only after you change your behavior and are experiencing positive events more frequently. Healthy behavior is defined as behavior that is directed toward improving your quality of life, and is directed toward the attainment of the values and goals you have in your life. In contrast with healthy behavior, unhealthy behavior generally is not directly related to improvements in the quality of your life and does not move you closer to accomplishing your goals or values.
Be aware that it is possible for you to be engaged in many activities, yet still depressed. This can happen if you feel overwhelmed with activities that are unfulfilling and that limit your ability to live according to your values. For example, although you may be active at work and home, these activities may be focused only on helping others. Although it certainly is important to help others, it is never a good idea to focus so much on others that your needs and feelings are totally neglected. This exclusive focus on the needs of others may result in feelings of emptiness and dissatisfaction, followed by confusion and guilt for having such feelings. Thus, it is not only important to engage in many activities, but at least some of these activities must bring some degree of pleasure and fulfillment.
What about trauma and loss in your life? Often people who have experienced a traumatic event in their life end up having long standing feelings of depression. After something terrible has happened or loved ones are lost, life feels empty, and not worth living at all. It can feel that there is very little to live for and that all the support and happiness you once had is gone forever. Thoughts and bad dreams may keep coming back about the bad experience or about the loved one who has passed away. In BA, it is very important that the counselor understands what happened to you, how you felt about it, and most importantly, how this affects your life now. At every session, as the BA counselor, I will ask you to spend some time talking about events in your life that have led to your depression. However, this treatment requires more than just talking about what has happened. In addition, I will also ask you to spend some time trying some strategies that will help you to live a more fulfilling and meaningful life. Although nobody can change events of the past, we can plan for a better future by what we do today. Often when people have experienced traumatic events and loss, negative thoughts and feelings about the event come to mind all the time. It becomes hard not to think about it or feel terrible that it happened. In BA, we find that it is important to understand how these experiences are impacting your current behavior. For example, you might find it difficult to sleep at night, and so you spend a lot of time sleeping during the day. If you sleep during the day, you may be unable to perform important daily activities or lack the energy and desire to socialize with family and friends. BA is an approach that will help you identify activities that might be making your depression worse and helping to change those activities so that you feel depressed less often. The goal of BA is to help you make the best life possible for yourself, starting with today. This can be hard work, but if you trust in the process you will find that good things will come from your effort. We will work at a pace that is comfortable for you. Are you willing to work on this together over the course of treatment?
Why is coming every week important? Depression is a problem that builds over time, and so it is not possible for it to be treated in a few days or after just one or two visits. It takes some work and it is very important to practice all of the strategies of BA with the help of your counselor. After about 12 weeks most people feel they have practiced the strategies enough to where they can begin to rely more on themselves and need therapy less. For this reason, only coming to a small number of sessions may not be helpful. Consider the example of cancer treatment. It is very important that you attend regular chemotherapy sessions to completely eliminate the cancer. It would not be helpful to come to only half of your chemotherapy sessions or just one or two- even if you begin to feel better. It would also not be helpful to skip several weeks between chemotherapy sessions. The cancer will continue to grow in between sessions, only worsening. Although it might seem very different, the treatment of depression requires the same structure and consistent attention. For this reason, we ask that you commit to giving this your best try by coming to all the sessions. We realize sometimes unforeseen events can arise that might cause you to miss a session, and this is understandable, but we urge you to not miss sessions because you are feeling depressed, tired, or unmotivated. We can talk about those feelings and most people will find that even when they are feeling this way, they feel much better after they have come to session and begun to work on a plan to overcome their depression. As your counselor, I am committed to work with you and will do my best to help you feel better, and I just ask that you are also committed to doing so as well. Based on the example above, we also urge you not to stop coming to treatment until it is over, even if you are feeling better and even if you are feeling worse.
Introduce Daily Monitoring (Form 1)
Because the main focus of this treatment is increasing your level of healthy behavior, it is important to get an accurate assessment of your daily activities. Although you may believe that you know how you are spending your time, we would like you to spend one week recording your activities. This is useful for several reasons. First, it provides us a measure of your activity level right now that we can compare to your activity level later in treatment after you use the treatment strategies. Second, an examination of your current level of activity may help you to realize that you are less active than you originally thought or that you are spending large amounts of time engaging in behavior that is contributing to your depression. Seeing this may motivate you to increase your healthy activity level. Finally, a close examination of your daily routine might lead you to develop some ideas about what activities you have time for and might enjoy. To monitor your current activities, we ask that you keep a detailed record (hour by hour) of all activities that you do, including those that seem insignificant such as sleeping or watching television. You will use the Daily Monitoring Form 1 to record your activities. You will need to complete one form for each day. For the next week behave in as “typical” a manner as possible. Your only task is to write down your activities, trying to be as accurate and as thorough as you can.
Importance and Enjoyment Ratings. Once you have recorded the activity, we ask that you then rate the activity in terms of two things: Importance and Enjoyment. For the Importance rating, think about how important in your heart it is to have this activity in your life. On a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 meaning that the activity has no importance at all and 5 meaning that the activity is of the highest importance in your life, rate each activity. For example, going to work is probably a very important activity in your life because it is your source of income to support your family. You might give your work a rating of 5. On the other hand, watching television is probably a less important activity in your life. You might give watching TV a rating of 1. For the Enjoyment rating, think about how much you enjoy the activity, in other words, how much fun you are having when you are doing the activity. You will use a 1 to 5 scale for Enjoyment as well. A rating of 1 will be for activities that you do not enjoy at all. A rating of 5 will be for activities that you enjoy very much. For example, going to a picnic might be considered a very enjoyable activity and be assigned a rating of 5, while washing the dishes might be considered no fun at all and be assigned a rating of 1.
Consider for a moment that some activities might be very important but not very enjoyable, and other activities might be very enjoyable but not very important. For instance, washing clothes might be high in importance but not very enjoyable, whereas watching a favorite TV program might be a very enjoyable activity but not a very important activity. Meanwhile some activities may be rated as high on both importance and enjoyment and others as low in importance and enjoyment. For example, eating dinner with family might get rated as a 5 in importance and enjoyment because both are very important and very enjoyable. On the other hand, lying in bed in the afternoon might be rated a 1 in both importance and enjoyment because it is neither important to your life nor very enjoyable.
To complete Daily Monitoring, you might choose to record your activities as you go through your day or you might prefer to wait until the end of the day and then record all the activities of the day all at once. You may do whichever is your preference. However, it is best to record your activities of the day on the day of the activities, as opposed to several days later. For example, it will be difficult on Friday to remember the activities from Monday. We will review your Daily Monitoring Forms each week so be sure to bring the completed forms to your session next week.
Important Points about the Structure of This Treatment
Before we finish today, it is important to understand that BA is a structured treatment. This means that treatment involves a series of steps over the course of treatment. It is very important for you to come every week, because each session builds on progress from the previous session. Further, you should know that these sessions will include assignments for you to work on in the session and then assignments for you to work on at home. It is important for you to commit to coming to each session and doing your best on the assignments at home so that you will see real improvements in your life.
Assignments:
1. Complete Daily Monitoring (Form 1).
Session Two
Session Two Key Elements:
1. Review Daily Monitoring (Form 1)
2. Introduce and Complete Contracts Part 1: Identifying Supportive People (Form 2: Top Part)
Review Daily Monitoring (Form 1)
We will begin this session by reviewing your Daily Monitoring Forms (Form 1) from the past week. It is important to notice the types of activities you are doing and if they are enjoyable, important, both, or neither. Often people with depression find themselves spending very little time in activities that are enjoyable. They often also withdraw from activities that are important to them. It is useful to take some time to discuss your level of activity and how often you are doing enjoyable and important activities. In the next few sessions, we will focus on making changes in your daily activities, but right now do not try to change anything. Instead, just pay attention to what your life is like everyday, what you are doing, and to what extent these activities are leading you to feel better or worse.
Introduce and Complete Contracts Part 1: Identifying Supportive People (Form 2: Top Part)
Although being motivated is very important, your chances of overcoming depression are improved when you have support for your healthy behavior. To begin, you should talk with your family and friends about your need to gradually increase your level of healthy behavior. Sometimes family and friends are more likely to notice your depressed behavior than your attempts at healthy behavior. Ask them to help you with this by helping you decrease your depressive behaviors (including talking about depression), and focus more on your efforts towards more healthy alternatives. Of course, we all need support and someone to listen when life is not going well, but the goal is to keep your depression from being the focus of your interactions with others. Further, ask them to help you be more active, and also to not do things for you when you are depressed. You want them to help you be independent, not to take care of all you responsibilities so you are dependent on them. Once we work to develop a list of healthy activities, we will help you make Contracts with friends and supportive family members to help you accomplish these activities. You will not have to do too much with Contracts right now. In fact, right now you only have to think about the people in your life, friends or family, who support you in some way. Using the Contracts (Form 2), you will begin by listing each person on the top part of the form. Later in Session 7, and throughout the rest of treatment, we will work together to complete the bottom part of the form for each person to help you seek support for the life changes you are trying to make.
Assignments:
1. Complete Daily Monitoring (Form 1)
2. Add Contracts Part 1: Identifying Supportive People (Form 2: Top Part)
Session Three
Session Three Key Elements:
1. Review Daily Monitoring (Form 1)
2. Review Contracts Part 1: Identifying Supportive People (Form 2: Top Part)
3. Introduce and Complete Life Areas and Values (Form 3)
Review Daily Monitoring (Form 1)
We will begin this session by reviewing your Daily Monitoring Forms (Form 1) from the past week. It is important to notice the types of activities you are doing and if they are enjoyable, important, both or neither. Often people with depression find themselves spending very little time in activities that are enjoyable. They often also withdraw from activities that are important to them. It is useful to take some time to discuss your level of activity and how often you are doing enjoyable and important activities. In the next few sessions, we will focus on making changes in your daily activities, but right now do not try to change anything. Instead, just pay attention to what your life is like everyday, what you are doing, and to what extent these activities are leading you to feel better or worse. You might also find that over time, recording your activities in this way becomes easier.
Review Contracts Part 1: Identifying Supportive People (Form 2: Top Part)
If you were able to identify other supportive people to list in your Contracts over the past week, be sure to write each persons name down on separate Contracts (top part of Form 2).
Introduce and Complete Life Areas and Values (Form 3)
An important step in BA involves determining the activities you would like to add to your life. The activities that you select should be ones that are important and/or enjoyable to you. One way to help identify activities is to think about what you value in life. Think for a moment about each of the following areas of your life. What are your values in each of these areas? A value is something that is important to you in your heart about that life area. Think about each of the questions below.
1. Family Relationships: What type of brother/ sister, son/ daughter, father/ mother do you want to be? What qualities are important in your relationship with those in your family? What is important to you about a good family?
2. Social Relationships: What would an ideal friendship be like to you? How could your relationships with your friends be improved? What do you enjoy and cherish in your friendships? How would new friendships enhance your life?
3. Romantic Relationships: What is important to you in your relationship/marriage? What would you like your time with your partner to be like? If you do not have a partner, would finding a partner enhance your life?
1. Education/ Training: Would you like to pursue further education, or receive specialized training? What would you like to learn more about? What is important to you about your education and training?
1. Employment/ Career: What type of work would you like to do? What kind of worker would you like to be? What is important to you about your work?
1. Hobbies/ Recreation: Are there any special interests you would like to pursue, or new activities you would like to do? What is important to you about your free time?
1. Volunteer Work/ Charity/ Political Activities: What contribution would you like to make to the larger community?
1. Physical and Psychological Health Issues: What is important to you about your general health, diet, sleep, exercise, etc.? What are your goals for this mental health treatment? Are there other issues besides depression that you would like to address?
1. Spirituality: What, if anything, does spirituality mean to you? Are you satisfied with this area of your life?
1. Responsibilities: What new daily responsibilities would bring you a sense of accomplishment?
From these life areas, a primary goal of this session is to identify key values form each of these life areas. For example, at the end of the session, you may identify a value as “wanting to become a better wife or husband.” At this point, it is not yet necessary to identify specific activities that you will do to accomplish these goals; You will identify activities to help you achieve this value in future sessions. For homework, complete values across as many life areas as you would like and bring these to our next session.
Assignments:
1. Complete Daily Monitoring (Form 1)
2. Edit and Add Life Areas and Values (Form 3)
3. Continue Adding Contracts Part 1: Identifying Supportive People (Form 2: Top Part)
Session Four
Session Four Key Elements:
1. Review Daily Monitoring (Form 1)
2. Review and Edit Life Areas and Values (Form 3)
3. Introduce and Complete Life Activities Checklist (Form 4)
Review Daily Monitoring (Form 1)
We will begin this session by reviewing your Daily Monitoring Forms (Form 1) from the past week. It is important to notice the types of activities you are doing and if they are enjoyable, important, both or neither. It is useful to take some time to discuss your level of activity and how often you are doing enjoyable and important activities. In the next few sessions, we will focus on making changes in your daily activities, but right now do not try to change anything. Instead, keep paying attention to what your life is like every day, what you are doing, and to what extent these activities are leading you to feel better or worse. You might also find that over time, recording your activities in this way becomes easier.
Review and Edit Life Areas and Values (Form 3)
Once you have determined the importance of various life areas and identified values that you would like to work toward, you are ready to start identifying activities. In completing this exercise with me, you likely will identify activities that for each Life Area and related values established in Session Three. For example, the life area of education and the related value of attending college might include specific actions such as enrolling in classes, purchasing textbooks, and studying several hours per week. As another example, the life area of family relationships and the value of developing a closer relationship with a particular family member may include specific actions such as eating dinner together every Saturday, calling them twice a week, or offering assistance (for example, baby sitting). Although completing activities aimed at a specific life area and value can be satisfying, it is important to select activities across a wide range of life areas that include both social activities as well as life responsibilities. One can think of this as a mix of “enjoyable” and “important” activities.
Introduce and Complete Life Activities Checklist (Form 4)
“Life is about the journey, not the destination.”
The Life Activities Checklist includes a list of activities that people are often interested in as well as spaces for you to write in your own activity ideas. Put a check next to activities on the list that you would be interested in adding to your list. In general, if you believe that completing a particular activity would bring a sense of pleasure and/or accomplishment, then it probably would be good to include it. When selecting activities it is important to remember that they must have two specific characteristics; they should be both observable by others and measurable. Therefore, a general goal like "thinking more positive" is not appropriate, but “eating dinner with my mother twice a week” would be appropriate. This latter activity could be observable and measurable in the sense that you could meet with her twice per week. Thus, if these two conditions are met, you have identified an acceptable activity. Sometimes it is tempting to select very difficult activities for which the benefits are very delayed or uncertain. For example, getting a college degree is a long-term goal. To address this potential problem without limiting your ambition, select activities across a range of difficulty, with only a few being more difficult long-term projects. To improve the likelihood of initial success and to help your transition into the program, three of the activities you choose should be activities you already are doing regularly but would like to increase in frequency or duration (see your Daily Monitoring Forms for assistance). We will spend some time now in Session 5 going through this list, but you should consider reviewing these activities and generating new ones on your own as well.
Assignments:
1. Complete Daily Monitoring (Form 1)
2. Review and Edit Life Activities Checklist (Form 4)
Session Five
Session Five Key Elements:
1. Review Daily Monitoring (Form 1)
2. Review Life Activities Checklist (Form 4)
3. Introduce and Complete Activity Selection and Ranking (Form 5)
4. Introduce and Complete Activity Hierarchy (Form 6)
Review Daily Monitoring (Form 1)
We will begin this session by reviewing your Daily Monitoring Forms (Form 1) from the past week. It is important to notice the types of activities you are doing and if they are enjoyable, important, both or neither. What changes if any have you noticed since the first week you started monitoring?
Review Life Activities Checklist (Form 4)
Now we will review the Life Activities Checklist. The most important thing is that all of the activities listed are observable and measurable. We should also be sure that each activity is related to a value that you identified on the Life Values Form.
Introduce and Complete Activity Selection and Ranking (Form 5)
You have identified many activities for each life area and related value. Today, we will pick 15 of those activities that we will begin with. As you select an activity, add it to Form 5 (Activity Selection and Ranking). Remember that the activities should be both observable and measurable and that activities should be directly relevant to the Life Areas and Values Assessment you already completed (Form 3). The more you can address these life goals (in Form 3) in your activities, the more likely you will experience the activities as both pleasurable and meaningful.
Introduce and Complete Activity Hierarchy (Form 6)
Once you have your 15 activities listed on Form 5, rank order them from 1 (easiest to accomplish) to 15 (hardest to accomplish) in Form 6 in the Activity Hierarchy. One way to do this is to first identify the easiest and assign it a 1, then identify the most difficult and assign it a 15. From there, try to fill in the others. The idea is that you will start with the easiest activities and gradually work toward more difficult activities.
Assignments:
1. Review Daily Monitoring (Form 1)
2. Review and Edit Activity Selection and Ranking (Form 5)
3. Review and Edit Activity Hierarchy (Form 6)
Session Six
Session Six Key Elements:
1. Review Daily Monitoring (Form 1)
2. Review and Edit Activity Selection and Ranking (Form 5)
3. Review and Edit Activity Hierarchy (Form 6)
4. Introduce and Complete Activity Planning (Form 1)
Review Daily Monitoring (Form 1)
We will begin this session by reviewing your Daily Monitoring Forms (Form 1) from the past week. It is important to notice the types of activities you are doing and if they are enjoyable, important, both or neither. What changes if any have you noticed since the first week you started monitoring?
Review and Edit Activity Selection and Ranking (Form 5)
Now we should be sure that you have completed your rankings of activities. If not, let’s complete this now. Are there any activities that should be broken into smaller steps? This can reduce the difficulty level of an activity, because the smaller steps will probably be less difficult than the entire activity as a whole. Consider doing this if you find you have too many difficult activities on your list.
Review and Edit Activity Hierarchy (Form 6)
With rankings complete, let’s review the Activity Hierarchy. If this is not yet finished, we can finish this in session now.
Introduce and Complete Activity Planning (Form 1)
Once you have identified the 15 target activities, you will need a plan for how you will include these activities into your life and how you will monitor your progress. We will use your Daily Monitoring Forms for the upcoming week to help you plan your new activities. To begin with, you will begin with 2-3 activities to focus on during the next week. Your opinion will be critical in deciding how many activities to select and it is important that you challenge yourself without becoming overwhelmed. Be sure to start with the first 2-3 easiest activities. Once you have decided on the activities you will do for the next week, take your blank Daily Monitoring Forms for the week and schedule those activities in on the day and time that you think you could do them. For example, if your activity is to play with your daughter you might enter that activity (Form 1) at 11am on Monday, 10am on Wednesday, and 9am on Thursday.
It’s important to consider if you are ready for a particular activity. If you are not, you may wait for another week to do it. However, you could select a smaller step towards accomplishing a larger activity. For example, if your goal is to exercise, you first might have to buy equipment or find out where you can exercise. You also might need to find a partner to exercise or find a ride if you will exercise away from home. So instead of starting with exercise, your activity for the first week could be go to the store for shoes on Wednesday at 11am and to invite a friend to exercise on Saturday at 10am. By doing these activities, your ability to start an exercise routine in a few weeks will be greatly increased. You must understand that it is very important to plan your selected activities including the time and days you will do it. By planning a day and time you will find that you are more likely to accomplish the activity.
During the upcoming week, you will complete the Daily Monitoring form just as you have been doing each day. However, when the time comes for the planned activity, circle the activity in your form if you complete it. If you do not complete it, cross it out and write in whatever you did do. It is ok if you are not able to do an activity on a particular day or at the time you had originally selected. If you cannot do an activity on the day or time that it is planned, just cross it out and then write the activity you did at that time instead. You can try and do the activity at another time. We will review your Daily Monitoring Forms next week as usual, but this time we will look for the activities you planned, how you felt when you did them, how important and enjoyable they were, and if you encountered any problems trying to accomplish them. We can work together to address whatever challenges arise.
If you begin to complete your activities, you will begin to accomplish the values you have set out for yourself in important life areas. In this way, you will be living a fuller life and feeling better about yourself as well as feeling less depressed. So, do not worry too much about the values and life areas for now- just focus on completing activities and the rest will happen naturally.
Assignments:
1. Complete Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning (Form 1)
Session Seven
Session Seven Key Elements:
1. Review Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning (Form 1)
2. Introduce and Complete Contracts Part 2: Getting Help from Supportive People (Form 2: Bottom Part)
3. Review and Complete Activity Planning (Form 1)
Review Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning (Form 1)
Let’s review your first complete set of 7 forms of Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning for each day last week. Were you able to complete your planned activities at the planned times and days? If not, were you able to do it on other days? If you did not complete an activity at all, it is important to consider why. Was it because you really do not want to do that activity after all? If this is true, then maybe you can replace this activity with another activity. On the other hand, did you encounter challenges that prevented you from doing the activity- even though you wanted to do it? If this is true, maybe you can find ways to get help. Next we will consider how your Contracts from Session 2 can be helpful in this way.
Introduce and Complete Contracts Part 2: Getting Help from Supportive People (Form 2: Bottom Part)
In Session 2, you completed the top part of Form 1 by listing supportive people (one copy for each supportive person). As you begin to plan and follow-through on your activities, you can use that list to write how these people can help you with your activities. This would be most helpful when there is an activity you want to complete but there are problems that prevent you from doing it. These Contracts are your chance to decide how your supportive people can help you overcome these problems. You might realize there are people you did not think to list in Session 2, and you may add that new person now. Once you complete the bottom part of the Contract for a person, you may talk with that person about the help you need. You may show the person the written Contract, but if you prefer you do not need to show them the Contract. Instead you can just use the Contract to help you talk with that person and tell them what you need.
What we will do in this session is you will identify an activity that you feel you could use help to complete. For example, you might need help getting yourself to go to the grocery store each week. Of the people you listed in your Contracts, who would be the most helpful with this activity? Once you have selected the right person, think of specific ways they might help and list these ways that person might help below the activity (see bottom part of Form 2). For example, you might ask them to accompany you to the grocery store on Saturday. Once you have identified the activity and listed one or more ways the supportive person can help, the next step is to ask that person if they would be willing to do this for you. You should definitely complete the Contract, but as said above, it is your choice whether you show the person the actual Contract or simply discuss what you need with them. You might find that involving others in your activities makes the activity more enjoyable. Involving others can also strengthen the support they provide in your life. All of these things will have a positive impact on the way you feel every day.
Review and Complete Activity Planning (Form 1)
Based on our discussion this session, you should now plan your activities for the following session week. If you are able, try to plan for 1 or more new activities for the upcoming week in addition to the activities you accomplished the previous week. I can help you with this exercise, but remember to go at your own pace.
Assignments:
1. Review and Edit Contracts Part 2: Getting Help from Supportive People (Form 2: Bottom Part)
2. Complete Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning (Form 1)
Session Eight
Session Eight Key Elements:
1. Review Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning (Form 1)
2. Review and Edit Contracts Part 2: Getting Help from Supportive People (Form 2: Bottom Part)
3. Review and Complete Activity Planning (Form 1)
Review Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning (Form 1)
Let’s review your complete set of 7 forms of Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning for each day last week. Are you finding that you feel better when you are more active? If so, this is good progress. If not, make sure that your activities are high in Importance, or Enjoyment, or both. Sometimes people will increase their activities, but find that the activities they selected do not feel as important or as enjoyable as they first assumed. Notice the Importance and Enjoyment ratings you gave the activities you planned. Instead, are you finding it is difficult to accomplish the activities you planned? If so, you might consider breaking those activities into smaller steps as we discussed in Session 6. It is very useful to consider small steps that can be accomplished that move you closer to the larger, more difficult activity.
Review and Edit Contracts Part 2: Getting Help from Supportive People (Form 2: Bottom Part)
Were you able to accomplish at least one behavior Contract? If not, it might be helpful to discuss the challenges you encountered. What made it difficult? If you are still finding it difficult to identify a supportive person, perhaps a place to start is to plan some activities that will help you build a more supportive network of friends. For example, are there people in your community that are your age and have had similar experiences as you? Perhaps there are ways to get to know these people better. Another idea is to identify places you can go where you will meet people who are similar to you. Then you can plan activities around visiting these places. If you were able to complete a behavior Contract, how did it go? If you found this to be a good experience, you might consider using Contracts for other activities as well. If you are still having trouble, it might be useful to take some time in this session to further review Contracts with your therapist.
Review and Complete Activity Planning (Form 1)
At this point, you might find that you want to make changes to the 15 activities in your hierarchy. Often new activities come to mind or you change your mind about activities you originally put on your hierarchy. You should feel free to change the hierarchy each week if you would like, adding new activities, changing them, breaking them into smaller steps if necessary, or removing some that you no longer want to include. Overcoming depression is a process, and as you begin to feel better your plans for yourself may change. You might find it easier to be more active and set increasingly difficult activity goals. On the other hand, you might feel that your original plan was too difficult and have new ideas on how to reduce the difficulty of your activities. Do not feel stuck with your original plan, because it is always open to change. The important thing is that you are increasing your activity level and as you do this your depression is improving. It is impossible to live an active, fulfilling, and enjoyable life and be depressed at the same time. The idea is to increase the amount of time you spend in healthy, active, fulfilling, and enjoyable activities so that this is what your life is about instead of your life being about depression.
Assignments:
1. Complete Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning (Form 1)
Session Nine
Session Nine Key Elements:
1. Review Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning (Form 1)
2. Review Concept and Edit Life Areas and Values (Form 3)
3. Complete Activity Planning (Form 1)
Review Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning (Form 1)
Let’s review your complete set of 7 forms of Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning for each day last week. Are you finding that you feel better when you are more active? If so, this is good progress. If not, make sure that your activities are high in Importance or Enjoyment or both. Sometimes people will increase their activities, but find that the activities they selected do not feel as important or as enjoyable as they first assumed. Notice the Importance and Enjoyment ratings you gave the activities you planned.
Are you finding it is difficult to accomplish the activities you planned? If so, you might consider breaking those activities into smaller steps. Think about small steps that can be accomplished that move you closer to the larger, more difficult activity.
Review Concept and Edit Life Areas and Values (Form 3)
In session 3, we spent a lot of time talking about Life Areas and Values. Today, I would like to review the concept of values to make sure that the activities that you are accomplishing still seem consistent with the values you mentioned earlier in treatment. Remember, an important step in BA involves determining the activities you would like to add to your life. While becoming more active in life is important, we need to be sure that the activities that you select are ones that are important and/or enjoyable to you. One way to help identify activities that are important to you is to think about what you value in life. Let’s revisit each of the life areas and the values you have in these areas. Remember, a value is something that is important to you in your heart about that life area. Review your values for: Family Relationships, Social Relationships, Romantic Relationships, Education/ Training, Employment/ Career, Hobbies/ Recreation, Volunteer Work/ Charity/ Political Activities, Physical and Psychological Health Issues, Spirituality, and Daily Responsibilities. Think about how much the activities you have been doing and planning in the last few weeks fit into your values. Are there new values that have come to mind? Are the activities consistent with the values you mentioned?
Complete Activity Planning (Form 1)
Once again, plan for 1-2 additional activities on your hierarchy and write them on your Daily Monitoring Forms for the coming week.
Assignments:
1. Complete Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning (Form 1)
Session Ten
Session Ten Key Elements:
1. Review Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning (Form 1)
2. Review Concept and Edit Activities (Forms 4, 5, and 6)
3. Complete Activity Planning (Form 1)
Review Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning (Form 1)
Let’s review your complete set of 7 forms of Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning for each day last week. Are you finding that you feel better when you are more active? If so, this is good progress. If not, make sure that your activities are high in Importance, or Enjoyment, or both. Sometimes people will increase their activities, but find that the activities they selected do not feel as important or as enjoyable as they first assumed. Notice the Importance and Enjoyment ratings you gave the activities you planned.
Are you finding it is difficult to accomplish the activities you planned? If so, you might consider breaking those activities into smaller steps. Just like in previous sessions, think about small steps that can be accomplished that move you closer to the larger, more difficult activity.
Review Concept and Edit Activities (Forms 4, 5, and 6)
Throughout treatment, you may have added, subtracted, or changed activities in your activity hierarchy. We can take some time to review how to go about selecting activities to add (as well as activities to remove or change) from Forms 4, 5, and 6. In general, if you believe that completing a particular activity would bring a sense of pleasure and/or accomplishment, then it probably would be good to include it. It is also important to determine which life value each activity will help to accomplish. Sometimes patients think of activities to accomplish, but the activities are not relevant to their life values. This is a good reminder to revisit the activities on your list and to think of the relevant life values. Also, when selecting activities it is important to remember that they must be both observable by others and measurable. Therefore, a general goal like "thinking more positive" is not appropriate, but “eating dinner with my mother twice a week” would be appropriate. This latter activity could be observable and measurable in the sense that you could meet with her twice per week. Thus, if these two conditions are met, you have identified an acceptable activity. Another thing to keep in mind is that it is sometimes tempting to select very difficult activities for which the benefits are very delayed or uncertain. For example, having your own home is a long-term goal. To address this potential problem without limiting your ambition, select activities across a range of difficulty from easy activities you are currently doing through extremely difficult activities that will take some effort and possibly several intermediate steps.
Complete Activity Planning (Form 1)
Once again, plan for 1-2 additional activities on your hierarchy and write them on your Daily Monitoring Forms for the coming week.
Assignments:
1. Complete Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning (Form 1)
Session Eleven
Session Eleven Key Elements:
1. Review Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning (Form 1)
2. Review Concept and Edit Contracts (Form 2: Top and Bottom Part)
3. Complete Activity Planning (Form 1)
Review Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning (Form 1)
Let’s review your complete set of 7 forms of Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning for each day last week. Are you finding that you feel better when you are more active? If so, this is good progress. If not, make sure that your activities are high in Importance or Enjoyment or both. Sometimes people will increase their activities, but find that the activities they selected do not feel as important or as enjoyable as they first assumed. Notice the Importance and Enjoyment ratings you gave the activities you planned.
Are you finding it is difficult to accomplish the activities you planned? If so, you might consider breaking those activities into smaller steps. Think about small steps that can be accomplished that move you closer to the larger, more difficult activity.
Review Concept and Edit Contracts (Form 2: Top and Bottom Part)
In Session 2, you completed the top part of the Contracts (Form 1) by listing supportive people (Top part of Form 2) and in Session 7 you began to use the Contracts to help complete some of your activities (Bottom part of Form 2). It would be helpful to take some time to review how well the Contracts are going. At this point, have you been able to identify at least one supportive person? Have you been able to get this person’s help with any of your activities? Remember, engaging the supportive people around you to help you accomplish healthy activities will not only make the activities easier to accomplish but will also help to strengthen your support system. Contracts are a way to get your supportive people to help you overcome depression. As we discussed before, sometimes supportive people in our lives would like to help us, but they either do not know how or they tend to do things for us that they think are helpful but are not actually helpful. For example, sometimes support people will take over your responsibilities because they see what a hard time you are having now. In other cases, support people will nag or push you to do things you are not ready to do. In both cases, the support person wants to help, but is doing things that are not helpful. Contracting will help you to ask support people for specific ways they can help. Again, it is not important that you show the support person the written Contract, just that you have a discussion with the person about the specific ways they can help.
If you have not yet tried a Contract, here is how to do get started. First, identify an activity that you feel you could use help with. Of the people you listed in your Contracts, who would be the most helpful with this activity? Once you have selected the right person, think of specific ways they might help and list them below the activity. Once you have identified the activity and listed one or more ways the supportive person can help, the next step is to ask that person if they would be willing to do this for you.
Complete Activity Planning (Form 1)
Once again, plan for 1-2 additional activities on your hierarchy and write them on your Daily Monitoring Forms for the coming week.
Assignments:
1. Complete Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning (Form 1)
Session Twelve
Session Twelve Key Elements:
1. Review Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning (Form 1)
2. Prepare for Termination: Continuation of Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning (Form 1)
Review Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning (Form 1)
Let’s review your complete set of 7 forms of Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning for each day last week. Are you finding that you feel better when you are more active? If so, this is good progress. If not, make sure that your activities are high in Importance or Enjoyment or both. Sometimes people will increase their activities, but find that the activities they selected do not feel as important or as enjoyable as they first assumed. Notice the Importance and Enjoyment ratings you gave the activities you planned.
Are you finding it is difficult to accomplish the activities you planned? If so, you might consider breaking those activities into smaller steps. Think about small steps that can be accomplished that move you closer to the larger, more difficult activity.
Prepare for Termination: Continuation of Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning (Form 1)
Congratulations! We have done a lot of great work together throughout treatment and you have accomplished so much. You have worked very hard! When we look back at your Daily Monitoring (Form 1) from the first week of treatment and compare them to your Behavioral Monitoring with Activity Planning (Form 1) from the last week of treatment, what do you see? (You should directly compare the first and last week of behavioral Monitoring). At this point, you have learned a number of skills that can help you feel better and live healthier when you begin to feel depressed again. Should depressed feelings return it will be helpful to review this manual and practice all of the skills again, and you might consider continuing to do the skills and monitoring as a part of your life regardless of how you feel!
Finally, it is important to remember that depression cannot exist when you live a healthy, meaningful, and fulfilling life. No matter what has happened to us in the past, it is possible for every one of us to make changes to our lives, to make the best of our circumstances, and spend our time doing activities that give us as much purpose, meaning, and enjoyment as possible. Good luck to you in all of your future endeavors.
Assignments:
1. Continuation of Daily Monitoring with Activity Planning for the Future (Form 1)
List of Forms
Form 1. Daily Monitoring (with Activity Planning starting in Session 6)
• Therapist Manual: One copy
• Patient Manual: 84 copies (one for each day of treatment)
Form 2. Contracts
• Therapist Manual: One copy
• Patient Manual: 10 copies
Form 3. Life Areas Assessment
• Therapist Manual: One copy
• Patient Manual: One copy
Form 4. Life Activities Checklist
• Therapist Manual: One copy
• Patient Manual: One copy
Form 5. Activity Difficulty Assessment
• Therapist Manual: One copy
• Patient Manual: One copy
Form 6. Activity Hierarchy
• Therapist Manual: One copy
• Patient Manual: One copy
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