Depression treatment is one of the single most sought-after mental health services. There are many different styles and approaches that clinicians can use, from pure medication management to brief therapy to family interventions to psychoanalysis. Often multiple approaches to treating depression are combined, and there is some empirical evidence that multiple concurrent treatment modalities tend to be more effective than single ones.
This may be because “depression” is such a nebulous term. Like every psychological disorder, there are specific diagnostic criteria for depression. However, there has been some debate about the validity of these criteria, simply because th symptoms are so common, cover such a wide area, and are subsumed by so many other psychiatric conditions. So you could say that there are as many treatments for depression as there are types of depression.
