Treatment of depression has three general aims: Remove symptoms Restore function Enhance resilience In other words, treating depression is not simply about removing pain – although blunting the worst of depression’s distress is a vital early step. Also crucial is a person achieving their optimal level of function, or in the words of Freud, the ability “to love and to work”. Closely related is producing a buffer against depression’s return, which involves targeting each domain through which depression appeared in the first place: the biological, the psychological, and the social.