CBT for Depression FAQs

This training on-demand - you can start anytime and complete at your own pace. You’ll learn through a combination of video lessons, therapy demonstrations, expert interviews, and clinical examples that show what effective CBT for depression looks like in practice. With 12 months of access, you can rewatch lessons, revisit skills, and integrate the material into your work over time.

The learning experience is practical, engaging, and designed to help you build real competence in CBT for depression.

You’ll learn how to use a full CBT toolkit for depression, including how to:

• Apply behavioural activation to increase engagement, mastery, and pleasure

• Identify and modify unhelpful thoughts, beliefs, and thinking styles

• Work with common depressive experiences such as hopelessness, self-criticism, anger, avoidance, and low motivation

• Use emotion-focused and compassion-informed strategies when appropriate

• Support clients in building problem-solving, assertiveness, social skills, and healthy sleep habits

• Maintain momentum in treatment and help clients move through stuck points

This course is designed for mental health and health professionals who want practical, evidence-based CBT strategies to treat depression. It’s ideal for clinicians working with clients experiencing low mood, hopelessness, anhedonia, self-criticism, anger, sleep disturbance, or co-occurring issues such as anxiety or substance use.

The training gives you clear, structured tools you can use to support clients through the challenges of depression with greater confidence and direction.

No — you can take this course on its own. If you’re newer to CBT, you may find it helpful to begin with Foundational CBT to build a strong grounding in formulation, behavioural strategies, and cognitive restructuring before applying these skills to depression treatment. But it’s not required.

You’ll learn directly from internationally recognized leaders in depression treatment, including Keith Dobson, Josephine Ridley, and David Tolin. Their teaching brings together the key behavioural, cognitive, and emotion-focused strategies shown to be most effective for depression, presented in a clear, structured way that mirrors real clinical work. The training focuses on practical, session-by-session skills and shows how CBT for depression unfolds with diverse clients,making it easy to apply in practice.

Yes. Depression commonly appears alongside anxiety, trauma histories, substance use, relationship difficulties, and broader emotional disorders. The course provides practical, flexible CBT strategies you can use whether depression is the primary issue or part of a more complex presentation.

12 CE/CME are available for CBT for Depression. View the Learner Notification to see the boards and jurisdictions, learning objectives and speaker disclosures. 

A certificate of completion will also be awarded. 

If you need to pay the admin fee for CE/CME credits, click here.