Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to normal everyday activities that can affect a person's thoughts, behaviour, feelings and overall well-being. It impacts your motivation to perform the activities of daily life. Counselling can help you overcome depression.

There are many causes of depression, most significant of which are: genetic inheritance; biological imbalances; and environmental stress, such as job loss. It can also be caused as a result of physical illness or substance abuse.

While everyone experiences sadness due to a variety of reasons from disappointments to the loss of a loved one, a severe prolonged sorrow that interferes with the ability to function, maintain interests or feel pleasure is in fact an illness of depression.

Depressive illness comes in many forms and is common amongst millions of North Americans. For every person that suffers from this illness, there are three to four relatives, friends and/or employees who are adversely affected.

There are a myriad of depressive illness symptoms ranging from lethargy, inability to experience enjoyment, exaggerated sadness, feelings of worthlessness to extreme irritability, unpredictable emotional change and impulsive high risk activities.

Overcoming Depression is a program that is designed to help clients maintain a positive outlook in life: being optimistic; gracefully accepting failure as a learning experience; being courageous; pursuing social, cultural and intellectual interests; motivating and rewarding themselves on goal accomplishments; in addition to other strategies.

The duration of the program is usually 10 to 12 individual sessions and the program can also be completed in a shorter period of time. For clients who do not need to complete the entire counselling program, single session therapy (SST) is available. The cost is $125 per session and more sessions can be arranged as needed.