Abstract: Interpersonal psychotherapy is a time-limited, manual-and-life-event based, diagnosis-targeted, and empirically tested treatment, which was originally developed for adult out-patients diagnosed with major depression and now for many sorts of disorders. There are some changes in its therapy process, including whether or not to give patients a “sick role”, what to include in its problem areas, and how to deal with its termination and arrange time. Besides, this article provides a few process studies, analyses its briefness and integration with other psychotherapeutic factors and at last offers a discussion of features and problems of interpersonal psychotherapy’s development

Key words: interpersonal psychotherapy, therapeutic process, depression