How To Use Behavioral Activation (BA) To Overcome Depression

Published by: Psychology Tools

When we are depressed we become less active. The less active we are the fewer opportunities there are for positive and rewarding things to happen to us. And the fewer rewarding things that happen to us the lower our mood becomes. Behavioral Activation (BA) is one way out of this vicious cycle. It is a practical and evidence-based treatment for depression.

The relationship between what we do and how we feel

Psychologists have found that there is a close relationship between our activity and our mood. When we are feeling good we spend time with people whose company we enjoy, do activities that make us feel good, and take on new tasks and adventures that challenge us as individuals. All of this activity has positive feedback effects:

• Doing things we enjoy gives us feelings of pleasure

• Challenging ourselves means that we have a chance to grow and develop, and gives us a sense of mastery

• Having positive relationships with other people makes us feel connected and valued

  
  

The reverse is true too. People who are depressed tend to do less overall and so they have fewer opportunities to feel pleasure, mastery, and connection – the things we need to feel good [1, 2, 3]. It is easy to fall into a trap:

What is Behavioral Activation?

One way out of this trap is to wait until something external improves our mood – if it does then we might feel more like getting back to our old levels of activity. This approach is passive though, and it can leave you feeling helpless. One big problem with the passive approach is that you are likely to be waiting for a long time – left to themselves episodes of depression can last for months at a time!

A more proactive way of breaking the vicious cycle of depression is to increase our level of activity even if we don’t feel like it to begin with. This approach is called Behavioral Activation (BA) and it is a psychological treatment for depression with one of the biggest evidence bases to demonstrate how effective it is [4, 5, 6]. Behavioral activation for depression is about making your life meaningful and pleasurable again, it involves these steps:

• Learning about the vicious cycle of inactivity > depression > inactivity and understanding that we need to activate ourselves to feel better again

• Monitoring our daily activities to understand the relationships between our activity and our mood

• Identifying our values and goals (working out what really matters to us)

• Simple activation (scheduling and carrying out meaningful activities to boost our experiences of pleasure and mastery)

• Problem-solving any barriers to activation.

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This guide will walk you through all of the essential steps to get you started with behavioral activation.

Activity monitoring: recording what you do and how

you feel

The first step in behavioral activation therapy is to monitor your activity and mood to understand more about how your depression works. This is called Activity Monitoring.

You can use an activity monitoring worksheet to record what you do each waking hour every day for a week. Make sure to record everything on this behavioral activation worksheet – even activities that don’t seem very important. We need to find out how your mood changes as you do different activities, so rate your mood for each time slot on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 representing feeling very depressed and 10 representing feeling very good.

To discover more and find tools to overcome depression click READ MORE below.

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References

[1] American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-5®). American Psychiatric Pub.

[2] Elfrey, M. K., & Ziegelstein, R. C. (2009). The “inactivity trap”. General Hospital Psychiatry, 31(4), 303.

[3] Roshanaei-Moghaddam, B., Katon, W. J., & Russo, J. (2009). The longitudinal effects of depression on physical activity. General Hospital Psychiatry, 31(4), 306-315.

[4] Ekers, D., Webster, L., Van Straten, A., Cuijpers, P., Richards, D., & Gilbody, S. (2014). Behavioural activation for depression; an update of meta-analysis of effectiveness and sub group analysis. PloS one, 9(6), e100100.

[5] Kanter, J. W., Manos, R. C., Bowe, W. M., Baruch, D. E., Busch, A. M., & Rusch, L. C. (2010). What is behavioral activation?: A review of the empirical literature. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(6), 608-620.

[6] Dimidjian, S., Barrera Jr, M., Martell, C., Munoz, R. F., & Lewinsohn, P. M. (2011). The origins and current status of behavioral activation treatments for depression. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 7, 1-38.