The treatment of depression as a mental spatial phenomenon

In 2016 the first pilot study into the treatment of depression on the base of the mental spatial insights was conducted by Christine Beenhakker within the frame of her psychology studies with 10 clients. This was published in an article entitled: Dark Matter; mental space and depression. Beenhakker, C. & Manea, A. I. (2017) Journal for Experiential Psychotherapy, 20, 21 – 26.

In the same year the Society for Mental Space Psychology conducted a larger study, where 47 clients were treated by 19 different therapists with a very similar protocol. The results were seen as convincing for the hypothesis that many people with a depression had repressed issues from their childhood that were hidden behind dark clouds in their mental space. By using this darkness to get access to what was repressed and next treat the found issue with a combination of classical NLP-tools, a significant level of relief from the symptoms was acquired that surpassed that of the control (waiting list) group.

This study was published in the book: Neurolinguistic Programming in Clinical Settings. Theory and evidence-based practice. Edited by Lisa de Rijk, Richard Gray, and Frank Bourke, by Routledge, 2022. Chapter 6, by Richard Gray and Lucas Derks.

Related Link
The discovery that depressed clients, that could not mention a cause for their suffering, had clouds of darkness in their mental spaces, is considered a breakthrough for the treatment of depression.
An alternative way to look at psychological disorders and health. When all psychological phenomena are happening in mental space, this must also hold for psychological issues of all sorts. This will give a new direction to the psychotherapy of the future. Read more in our book Mental Spatial Diagnosis.