Depression Treatment in Bangkok

Most people who come in for depression don’t say they’re sad. They say they’re tired. Tired in a way sleep doesn’t touch. Things they used to enjoy have gone flat. Any effort seems to cost more than it could return.

That flatness is what depression usually looks like from the inside. You can be in it and still be holding everything together, at work, for family, for everyone but yourself.

In Bangkok it’s easy to explain it away: the heat, the job, the long tail of adjusting to life abroad. All of those are real, which is exactly why depression gets missed. People often wait months before anyone says the word.

What it can look like

• Sleep stops working. You sleep long hours and wake up unrested, or you can’t get going at all.
• Work, friends, food, weekends: things you used to care about lose their pull. You cancel plans, feel bad about it, then avoid people more.
• Small tasks pile up: unread messages, errands, the dishes. The pile starts to feel like evidence about who you are.
• Concentration goes. You read the same email three times and take in none of it.
• For some people it comes out as irritability more than sadness.

If this has been sitting on you for more than a couple of weeks, it’s worth getting help. You don’t need a diagnosis first. Most people who come in don’t have one.

What happens when you get in touch

You can call 092 288 7234 or send a message, saying as much or as little as you like, and arrange a first appointment at either of our offices: Sukhumvit 81 in Phra Khanong, or the Racquet Club on Sukhumvit 49/9. The first session is about what’s been happening and what you’d want to be different. A first message commits you to nothing. You can ask questions and decide afterward.

What you say and write is treated as confidential. If the worry of someone in Bangkok’s small expat circles finding out has kept you waiting, you’re not the first to bring it up.

How we work with depression

Dr. Mason works with four main approaches. With depression, your world shrinks and your thinking darkens, and the two feed each other. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) breaks that cycle in small, concrete steps. Person-centred supportive therapy is the steadier part: careful listening, no rush to fix anything. Positive psychology puts attention on what still gives you something, and widens it. Narrative therapy takes on the story depression tells, that you’ve always been this way, and checks it against your life.

He’s a psychologist, not a psychiatrist, so he doesn’t prescribe. If medication becomes something you want to explore, that’s a conversation for a doctor, and he can help you think it through and point you to someone who can.

If you’ve never been in therapy, it’s more ordinary than it sounds: a quiet room, a conversation with some structure to it. You don’t have to be sure it’s “bad enough” to come in.