Last updated 3/28/2024
Social Rhythm Therapy (SRT) is a mood stabilizing treatment. It can help stop repeated episodes or mixtures of depressions and manic or hypomanic symptoms.
SRT strengthens your body’s natural 24-hour clock. Weakening of that clock is part of what causes depressions and manic symptoms.
A regular bedtime and a regular rise time are two of the most important ingredients in Social Rhythm Therapy. If you do nothing else, making your sleep hours very consistent can have a large effect on your mood. So if you can’t find a therapist who can offer you SRT, you can work on your sleep timing on your own; here’s a page and video that I hope will help you with that process : Simple help for more regular sleep.
Unfortunately, not very many psychotherapists know enough about Social Rhythm Therapy to offer the full program. Finding someone who says “SRT, yeah sure, I can do that” is not very likely. But a do-it-yourself workbook is now available. As with any workbook, it’s important to do the suggested activities, not just read the book. But this will be a big step forward for SRT.
In the meantime, just working on your sleep timing could get you many of the benefits of a full SRT program.