I would not even consider therapy necessary when interpersonal problems, irrational fears and extremely unhealthy coping are NOT your main issues but you just want to treat the mood episodes. Never has therapy helped me cope or tame down a mood episode. It did however improve somewhat relationships and gave me a new perspective (all of which could be achieved by competent friends and a good social circle, but I agree thats not availabe to everyone). Btw I tried multiple therapy approaches with multiple therapists, and yes for a longer time. I went there with high hopes (thank you media, for selling therapy as the magic pill that you MUST do and it HELPS!!! while demonizing pills because BigPharma apparently wants to poison you). I recently checked on Randomized Controlled Trials (the gold standard of science) on CBT (the GoLdStAnDarD in talk therapy) and was surprised at how small the effect size was to treat depression. Compare that to drug studys like lithium and you know what is statistically more likely to help. Please stop praising CBT for everything (it has better but still quite small outcomes for panic disorders) while keeping people from trying drug treatments.