In today's society it is very easy to find a person trapped in the deep hole that is depression. Currently it is estimated that 1 in 10 adults in the United States alone suffers from clinical depression. With all the financial,emotional and physical factors, it is easy to give in to feelings of hopelessness as well as sadness. The first and most common approach to treat depression is medication, specifically psychotropic drugs. In fact since the 1990s the number of antidepressant drugs has risen from 55.9 million to 154.7 million. However there are several other alternatives to treating depression, medication is not necessarily the only option. For what ever reason many of the different choices out there are often over looked, furthermore, one of the most commonly overlooked ones is psychotherapy.
What exactly is Psychotherapy? It is a set of procedures that helps individuals identify the source of their depression or anxiety, show that the origin of the problem is a product of their own imagination, as it is with most patients, and ultimately help individuals to overcome this obstacle. It provides individuals with the skill they need to move on past their negative feelings and improve self-esteem as well as overall health. Psychotherapy is a relatively new field that has ever increasing and promising results. However this procedure is not for everyone, if you're looking for an immediate or miraculous cure to depression, you won't find it here. A person must also be willing to open up and co-operate with a professional in to make progress in their therapy. In the least, psychotherapy is a much safer way of approaching depression since it does not involve the consumption of drugs that psychiatrists still do not fully know the effects of.
In conclusion, it must be stated and shared with the public that there are several other treatment options no only for depression, but for other mental health disorders. One of those treatments is Psychotherapy, while further research is necessary to provide more concrete results for psychotherapy, it does not hurt to give it a shot. So next time you think you need a prescription to fix your illness, consider your other alternatives.
http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2012/10/psychotherapy-depression.aspx
Depression is a disorder that is quite common in the U.S and has been tested for treatement in many different ways. I just finished discussing Major Depression Disorders in my Abnormal Psychology class. Certain psychological factors that are said to play a role in depression disorder are neuroticism, which is when a person reacts to events with greater than average negative affect. It is said that negative thoughts and beliefs are seen to be major causes in depression. And Aaron Beck argued that depression is associated with a negative triad. Which involve negative veiws of oneself, the world, and the future. This is usually derived from a negative schema that a person has acquired. Also depression is triggered by hopelessness, when a certian desirable outcome will not occur and the person has no way of changing that. Rumination can also be a great affect of depression, which causes the person to constantly ponder over negative and sad experiences and thoughts. Interpersonal Psychotherapy as you mentioned is very effective in relieving depression and it prevents relapse when continued. There is also Congnitive Therapy, where if a person is being very negative due to a certain experience, the therapist will help the individual look for certain alterantive explanations to why the situation may have played out to be the way it did, and for the individual to see that they should not be so hard on themselves. Usually clients are asked to monitor their thoughts and to challenge overly negative thoughts. This therapy is also proven to be very effective. Behavioral Activation Therapy can be a component to Congnitive Therapy where it tries to push individuals to get involved in postively reinforcing activities to disrupt the spiral of dipression, withdrawl and avoidance. All these therapies are proven to be quite beneficial for treating depression and there are also a couple of others.
ReplyDeleteI have several family members suffering from depression and even I have suffered from it so this topic is one that i consider serious. It is relieving to know that there are ways other than medication because I personally believe that medication should not be the answer. Depression would be easier to deal with once the cause is known and addressed. I look forward to learning more about psychotherapy through my own research to understand how it can be applied to depression as well as other mental ilnesses
ReplyDeleteI am so glad that I ran across this article, because recently I was speaking to my boss, and he was telling me how it is hard to teach older folks. I am definitely going to forward this to him, so that I can prove to him that older folks can definitely learn something new. I truly believe that older folks can learn new things no matter how complex they are, especially when I see my grandmother master the skills of using an iPad. My grandmother is 86 and she was able to teach herself how to use the technology that many times middle aged individuals such as my parents are not able to master. It is amazing to see research that supports brain plasticity and how neurons can be rewired or strengthened by learning. Learning especially repetition of the skill can be such a rewarding experience in terms of neuronal connections as they are strengthened. This can motivate older folks to want to possibly learn that one skill they really wanted to learn when they were younger but had no time to do so. I feel the need to encourage older folks to learn because it doesn't just keep their minds active but also can be rewarding in the end. This is absolutely great!
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