Interpersonal Therapy: An Introduction for Clinicians

Abstract

Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) (Klerman and Weissmann [1]) is currently enjoying increasing popularity in North American and European psychiatry. The modality is a brief and highly structured manualbased psychotherapy that addresses interpersonal issues to the exclusion of all other foci of clinical attention. This approach has allowed ready modification of the original treatment manual for depression to a variety of illnesses[2]. Rather than paraphrasing the original IPT manual, this article aims to serve as an introduction of IPT for the general clinician in the hope of encouraging its utilisation as another treatment modality in the everincreasing number of options for brief psychotherapy.