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Biological Aspects
Depression is a very serious mental illness. It affects about 9.5 percent of the population, or 18.8 million American adults. Depression is something that involves the body, mood and thoughts. It affects the way a person eats, sleeps, thinks about themselves, or how they feel about themselves. Typically people who are depressed show signs of persistent sadness (empty mood), feelings of guilt, hopelessness, insomnia, concentration difficulties and loss of interest in their favorite things, including sex. Many also have thoughts of suicide, and persistent physical symptoms like headaches, digestive disorders and chronic pain. Depression affects many people including women, men, elderly, and children.Many people have found ways to cope with their depression.
There are many treatments involved with depression, which goes beyond antidepressants. Many of the treatments include exercise, light therapy, yoga and meditation, and transcranial magnetic stimulation.
Exercise is a source for the body and the mind to be free of rigid, negative patterns. It helps to stimulate “feel good” brain chemicals like, endorphins, adrenaline, serotonin and dopamine. The process of exercise helps to break the cycle of depression by promoting a sense of accomplishment. Studies show that thirty to forty minutes of aerobic exercise three to five times a week can cut depression symptoms almost in half.
Another possible treatment to consider for depression is herbal remedies. It is said that botanicals help affect mood. Psychologists say that it boosts the amount and efficacy of serotonin in the brains hypothalamus and hippocampus which in turn allows the body to absorb more mood enhancing chemicals.
Light therapy is when people who are depressed are exposed to an artificial light that is 10,000 lux of white light. The light alerts the body to stop producing melatonin a hormone to help people sleep, and it is thought to produce more serotonin. After about three weeks of treatment it can possibly cut depression symptoms by 60 percent.
Last but not least, yoga and meditation are other possible treatments for depression. Meditation is said to help you have more control over your emotional state and it can improve your resilience. It also produces lasting positive changes in both the brain and the immune system. Some people say that they may feel results right away but it could possibly take up to six to eight weeks. When practicing yoga, doing certain kind of backbends or chest opening exercises, allows for more circulation of the blood to the brain and can affect mood.
The last method to treating depression is called transcranial magnetic stimulation. This treatment is used to treat severe depression. It involves putting a magnetic field onto the brain. It is directed to the parts of the brain that are responsible for depressive feelings and it quiets it. This treatment is currently only used in trials, because it has not been approved by the FDA. It does carry a risk for seizures, so only patients who are unresponsive to other treatments are allowed a trial run.
Cognitive BehaviorThere are many times of therapy but one therapy has been well known for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Cognitive Therapy has been used on many depression patients. Doctors that deal with depressed patients want to take the patient and bring them into a state of comfort and trust. Next the doctor wants to identify the patient’s dysfunctional thoughts, feelings and emotions. The doctor then feels the patient needs to be challenged and give themselves confidence to overcome their fear of entering back into the state of depression. The doctor also gives each patient assignment’s to complete; he or she wants the person to feel they can complete it on their own. I feel Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is very successful tool that helps struggling depressed individuals. I feel with this style of Cognitive Therapy it is a great way for people who are depressed to work on their weaknesses. It gives them a great chance to be happy and sufficient everyday. They enjoy the day more then they once hated it. After analyzing both the textbook and the online article there were many similarities shown between the book and the online article.After the analyzing the article and the textbook they both agreed on each point or step stated. The difference between the two is in the textbook the doctors chose whether he or she wants to complete all steps or chose steps the person needed or felt should accomplish. The online article made it clear that the patient follows the rubric. The doctor wants their patient to have a better handle on their own situation, being able to deal with bad emotions that may arise. In both the online article and textbook shows that depression both agree that their goal was to try to change and or improve their dysfunctional thoughts and turn them into positive thoughts.
Behavioral Depression
In a small article Martin Seligman believes that Sadness can be triggered by negative events which creates depression. Begin able to avoid these negative events that occur in someone’s life will keep them away from depression.In order to stay away from depression it consist of having positive emotion from the past, and remain to do them in the future. Positive emotions that people need to look at are satisfaction, contentment, fulfillment, pride, and serenity. Doing this we learn gratitude and forgiveness exercises which enhances positive memories. Positive emotions about the future include having hope, faith, trust, confidence, and optimism. And these especially optimism fight against depression.When people do not develop enough positive emotion then depression will usually occur, but when there are a lot of positive emotions then it will counter react with depression.
In the book psychology: Themes and Variations Seligman also states that depression is caused by learned helplessness. Also known as giving up on something. People usually give up on something when there is just a turn for the worse in a number of events at one time. Seligman also went on to state that depression lies when people describe the set back of the negative emotion that they had. People get depressed when they blame themselves as personal flaws rather then situational factors which is known as pessimistic explanatory stile. Depressed people also feel hopeless as if there is no way to over come there past or problem they had.
People need to be able to cope with there problems. This means that people need to reduce the demands of stress by tolerating what has occurred negatively in ones life. For an example to cope with a failed test you may want to increase study habits or going to a tutoring center. Blaming a teacher for the bad grade will also relieve stress.
Social Psychology
According to Wayne Whitten, (2008, p. 467) “Social psychology is the branch of psychology concerned with the way individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by others.”This means that everybody around us effects how we act. There are many causes of depression and there are many treatments of depression. Some of the treatments of depression might use social psychology to help the patients overcome depression. For example, a person who is the only person to survive a car crash and is depressed might be treated by having the talk to people like them who has beaten depression.
In Pakistan women who have depression due to breast cancer, are more likely to survive longer in the event that they have supportive social networks at home (Nausheen, 2007, 859). A social treatment of depression might involve family ties, group counseling or rebuilding relationships. An example of how important a social support network is: foreign brides that immigrate to a new country have no social connections because they left them all back home. But if they are pregnant, like what happens to most woman from Vietnam that immigrate to Taiwan. After they have given birth to their child and if they don’t receive social support they might slip into a depression (Lin, 2007, p.243). Therefore social support networks are an important tool in treating depression.
As depression is studied more, more treatments will be made available to the public. Buta social treatment of depression might be one of the safer ones because there are virtually no medicines involved and the people are rebuilding their social skills. Humans are social creatures therefore we need to have social networks in order to function.
Treatments of Depression
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