Depression also called as “The Common Cold of Mental Health” is a mental health disorder that affects your body, mood, and thoughts. It even affects your everyday routine like the way you eat, the way you sleep, the way you think, and the way you feel about yourself. The people who’s suffering from depression may experience difficulty with their short term memory. Negative thoughts and thinking also occurs in their mind. They always feel that they are sad and hopeless and the results of these are poor self esteem, excessive guilt and self-criticism. When they reached their serious depression, they have self-destructive thoughts. For some people, because of the negative emotions being experienced, they lack motivation and concentration they no longer enjoy activities that they once found pleasant experienced.
Some types of depression run in families, indicating that a biological vulnerability to depression can be inherited. This seems to be the case especially with bipolar disorder. Studies have been done of families in which members of each generation develop bipolar disorder. The investigators found that those with the illness have a somewhat different genetic makeup than those who do not become ill. However, the reverse is not true. That is, not everybody with the genetic makeup that causes vulnerability to bipolar disorder has the illness. Apparently, additional factors, possibly a stressful environment, are involved in its onset.
Psychotherapy can help treat depression. A significant number (50 percent) of patients with mild to moderate forms of depression obtain substantial symptom relief with psychotherapy. Many patients begin to feel the effects of psychotherapy in the first few weeks. Full remission rather than improvement is the objective of treatment. If there is no symptom improvement at all within 6 weeks, the choice of treatment modality should be reevaluated. For patients who improve but who are still symptomatic after 12 weeks, treatment with medication is a strong consideration.
Maintenance Antidepressant medication is the most commonly known treatment strategy for mental health disorders. How do they work? It depends on the type of antidepressant. Basically, depression medicines alter brain chemistry by effecting neurotransmitters, the brain’s chemical substances which are responsible for various functions within the body. Anti-depressants are also used to treat other psychiatric and medical conditions. To obtain medications for depression, you need a prescription from a doctor, which can be filled at a pharmacy. A common mistake is stopping antidepressant medications without talking to your doctor first. Many people stop because of side effects and never talk to their doctor about other options. Now there are many different types of medicine for depression. Sometimes it may take several tries to find the right anti depression medication for you. The best antidepressant will be prescribed based on many factors such as the symptoms you’re experiencing, other medicines you’re taking, other medical conditions you have and the antidepressant’s potential side effects.