Therapy for Depression
It is difficult to deal with depression alone. Reach out to seek help from a trained therapist.
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What is Depression?
Depression is a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of depressed mood or sadness and the often profound loss of interest in things that usually bring you pleasure.
1. Major depressive disorder (MDD): Major depressive disorder is often referred to as clinical depression. It exhibits intense symptoms of depression that last for longer than two weeks.
2.Bipolar depression: People with bipolar disorder have periods of abnormally elevated mood known as mania. These periods can be mild (hypomania) or they can be so extreme as to cause marked impairment with a person’s life, require hospitalization, or affect a person’s sense of reality. During the low periods, they may have depression symptoms such as feeling sad or hopeless or lacking energy.
3.Perinatal and postpartum depression: “Perinatal” means around birth. Perinatal depression can occur during pregnancy and up to one year after having a baby. Pregnancy can bring about significant hormonal shifts that can often affect a woman’s moods.Symptoms go beyond “the baby blues,”
4.Persistent depressive disorder (PDD): PDD is also known as dysthymia. Symptoms of PDD are not as severe as major depression. It can be mild, moderate, or severe. People might experience brief periods of normalcy, but this relief of symptoms lasts for two months or less.
5.Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD): Premenstrual dysphoric disorder is a severe form of premenstrual disorder (PMS). It affects women in the days or weeks leading up to their menstrual period.
6.Seasonal affective disorder (SAD): Seasonal depression, or seasonal affective disorder, usually starts in late fall and early winter. It often goes away during the spring and summer, when the climate is sunny and nature seems more alive.
PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS
- Eating too much or too less
- Changes in sleep pattern; insomnia or oversleeping
- Unexplained aches or pains; stomachaches, headaches, muscle pains, etc
- Anxiety
- Excessive crying
MENTAL/EMOTIONAL SYMPTOMS
- Feeling helpless and hopeless
- Feeling lost
- Getting angry or irritated easily
- Loss of energy
- Self loathing
- Having a difficult time concentrating or remembering things
- Not being able to make decisions, even small ones
- Loss of interest in daily activities
- Reckless behavior
- Thinking about hurting or killing* yourself
Brain chemistry: Abnormalities in chemical levels of the brain may lead to depression.
Genetics: A family history of depression may increase the risk of suffering through it.
Life events: Stress, the death of a loved one, upsetting events (trauma), isolation and lack of support can lead to depression. However, the syndrome of clinical depression is never just a “normal” response to stressful life events.
Medical conditions: suffering with disease, physical pain and other illnesses can cause depression. People often have depression along with conditions like diabetes, cancer and Parkinson’s disease.
Medication: Some medications have depression as a side effect. Some drugs, such as isotretinoin (used to treat acne), the antiviral drug interferon-alpha, and corticosteroids, can increase your risk of depression.
Personality: People who are easily overwhelmed or have trouble coping may be prone to depression.
Substance abuse: People with substance misuse problems could also end up having major or clinical depression. It is important to remember that even if drugs or alcohol temporarily make you feel better, they ultimately aggravate depression.
Other personal problems: Problems such as social isolation due to other mental illnesses or being cast out of a family or social group can contribute to the risk of developing clinical depression.
Age: People who are elderly are at higher risk of depression. That can be made worse by other factors, such as living alone and having a lack of social support.
Abuse: Physical, sexual, or emotional abuse can make you more vulnerable to depression later in life.
Our Treatment Approach to Therapy for Depression
To be written by Sadia
To be written by Sadia
Benefits of Coping with Depression through Counseling
Counseling can be a powerful tool for overcoming depression;
Individual counseling sessions can help identify the specific stressors/ triggers that make your depression worse. A therapist can help you understand your depression better, by supporting you as you work through the triggers and issues you might be facing.
A therapist will encourage you to maintain healthy connections with family, friends and will discuss strategies to help you manage your stress. Your therapist can also help you cultivate healthy habits that support your treatment, like making sure you take your medicines, seeing your doctor regularly; preventing your depression from getting worse or for a depressive episode to re-occur.
FAQs on Therapy for Depression
Depression symptoms vary from person to person. They also vary from mild to severe. Hence it is very difficult to establish a timeline for healing. In addition, people taking therapy for depression have different patterns and motivation levels which also impact the time taken to create shifts. It is helpful to not see it as a time investment and instead see it as work for your wellbeing and overall growth. You can take a few sessions of therapy to know how it makes you feel. Thereafter your therapist and you can decide how frequent your sessions need to be and how much longer it is likely to take. Therapy for depression involves resolution not just of the depression symptoms but the root of the difficulty. It is meant to build resilience not just to the present difficulty but for future difficulties as well. Hence it is highly recommended to be patient and dedicated.
A psychologist who addresses depression symptoms is qualified and trained to uncover the underlying patterns that continue to give rise to the depression. Sometimes the underlying pattern may be anger towards oneself or others. At other times, it may be a very strong and judgmental tendency towards oneself that is leading to a chronic feeling of low. The psychologist will help uncover the causes and the factors that are keeping this tendency in place. They will also suggest the mental and behavioural patterns you need to be aware of and suggest simple and regular methods to create shifts. A psychologist can be very helpful in helping you manage depression however the your own motivation to heal and willingness to work through difficult patterns will contribute greatly to reduction in symptoms of depression.
Online therapy for depression is helpful if you do not have severe symptoms. If you are feeling actively suicidal or violent or are losing weight, having severe sleep deprivation and no motivation to live, then seeing a psychiatrist and meeting a therapist in-person is recommended. On the other hand, if your depression is mild where you suffer from lack of motivation, feeling blue and low or it is a long term chronic problem, then online therapy for depression can be a treatment of choice. Online therapy for depression can help by addressing the underlying patterns and help create positive shifts in the mood and feeling. The main advantage of online therapy for depression is that it is very convenient and you can see a therapist from the comfort of your home. In depression, motivation is often a problem. Hence even if you are not very motivated to travel and meet a therapist, it can be done so with minimal effort through online therapy.
Depression makes people feel low and in that low phase there seems to be less hope. One may feel that they will stay like this forever. However, that is not true. Depression can be overcome. The first step is to believe that depression will get over, that it is a condition, not your natural state. The second step is to not try and do it all alone. The idea that you must just snap out of depression is not only unrealistic, it puts a great deal of pressure on the person undergoing depression and actually worsens the condition. Get the support you need. A mental health professional is especially trained to provide this support, which is compassionate and non-judgmental in nature. As psychologists, we know that people cannot just snap out of depression and need consistent and patient support to manage their depression symptoms. We understand that depression follows a pattern and are trained to help people overcome their symptoms and more importantly their underlying patterns of thought, emotion and behaviour that are keeping the depression in place.
Sadness is a common human emotion. It is natural to feel sad or low from time to time. However, when sadness or the low feeling become a state of mind for long periods of time or last for episodes that are weeks or months long, they become a diagnosable condition that we commonly call depression. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), depression belongs to a group of mood disorders which are characterized by long periods of feeling empty and low, crying spells, occasional lack of desire to live, and/or low motivation. There is also another mood disorder called dysthymia where the feeling or being low is milder and more chronic and does not come in episodes but is more a part of life.
A good recommendation is not to self-diagnose. If you are feeling low, whether or not your symptoms are diagnosable, you will benefit from therapy for depression which will definitely help you move towards healthier and happier states of mind.
How to Book a Therapy Session for Depression
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NOTE: We are not a crisis intervention center and only deal with mild to moderate conditions. If you are in a state of emergency or crisis, we urge you to contact a crisis prevention helpline or seek offline therapy.
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