I was amused to find that the word ‘worry’ comes from the Old English meaning ‘to strangle!’ To a large extent, that’s what depression does to us. It strangles us to the point where we’re unable to continue to lead a normal life. Why do I keep getting depressed, you may well ask.

Have you ever had the experience where, after meeting and talking to someone for just a short time, they leave you with an unaccountable feeling of depression?

I knew a chap like this once. It wasn’t that he was depressing in his attitude. In fact, if anything, he was quite upbeat. The trouble was that he used to talk in a monotone voice, no inflections, no depth to his speaking. He used to leave me feeling very depressed. If you know of such a person, or perhaps you’ve been lucky enough to have avoided one, do try to keep out of their way as much as possible.

You sometimes run into them if you mix with very serious, scholastic types. Let me hasten to add that by no means all scholars are depressing to talk to. On the contrary, some a quite hilarious, but if you do have a circle of friends who’s general demeanor makes you depressed, I would really suggest you try to ease yourself from their company and find others who enjoy life rather more.

Some people, I know, are just downright depressing from the word ‘go.’ If you’ve just come out of hospital after an operation, they had the same operation a few years ago, but of course theirs was much worse. If you’ve just started a business, they may reply that they hope you don’t fail like old so-and-so. They say it seems to them you were mistaken in going into business during these bad economic times. And so on.

They’re out there. Watch for them.

Too little sleep and relaxation is another thing that can cause the basis for depression. We hope you’re not indulging in any ‘stinking thinking,’ brooding about matters long past, but make sure you have sufficient sleep and that it’s the right kind of sleep.

If you find yourself dreaming excessively, have a look at your life and see whether something’s worrying you enough to cause these dreams. You won’t be enjoying the restful sleep that’s so necessary to us all.

Eating foods with excessive carbohydrates and consuming too much sugar, can also send your moods on a roller coaster ride. So make sure you relax properly, and go to bed at a sensible hour.

If you’re under a doctor’s care, and you’re taking antidepressants, go back to the doctor if your depression seems to be worsening, and ask him or her about the side effects of the medicine. The dosage may be too high, or they simply may not suit you. In which case, change them.

Here, we find another roller coaster. Withdrawals from certain antidepressants can plunge you ever deeper into depression, and then you’re given more pills to counter the withdrawals you had from your first set of medications.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a abbreviated form of psychological used in the direction of adults and children with natural depression. Its focusing is on prevalent issues and symptoms versus more traditional forms of therapy which tend to focus on a someone’s past yesteryear. The usual format is weekly therapy sessions coupled with daily praxis exercises designed to help the sufferer apply CBT skills in their home surroundings.

CBT for depression involves respective important features: identifying and correcting unfaithful thoughts associated with depressed sensitivity (cognitive restructuring), helping patients to pursue more often in gratifying activities (behavioural activation), and enhancing problem-solving skills. The first of these components, cognitive restructuring, involves cooperation between the patient and the expert to reckon and modify habitual errors in thinking that are associated with depression. Depressed patients often undergo contorted thoughts about themselves (e.g. I am stupid), their environment (e.g. My life is direful) and their prospective (e.g. There is no sensation in going forward, nothing will work out for me). Message from the patient’s current experience, bygone history, and future prospects is used to counter these distorted thoughts. In addition to self-critical thoughts, patients with depression typically cut back on activities that have the possible to be enjoyable to them, because they expect that such activities will not be worth their exertion. Regrettably this usually results in a deplorable cycle, wherein dispirited mood leads to less activity, which in turn results in further depressed mood, etc.

The second portion of CBT Therapy, behavioral activation, seeks to remediation this downward spiral by negotiating increases in potentially satisfying activities with the patient. When patients are depressed, problems in daily realistic often seem unsurmountable. In the final, the CBT therapist provides and counsel in special strategies for solving problems (e.g. breaking problems down into small steps).

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a scientifically well-established and effective treatment for depression. Over 75% of patients show noteworthy improvements.

Summary of CBT Therapy

First, remember that we cannot present Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in one web page, or in a few paragraphs. But, the marrow of cognitive therapy is the hypothesis that unreasoning thoughts and beliefs, overgeneralization of antagonistic events, a hopeless outlook on life, a tendency to focus on problems and failures, and negative self assessment, as well as other cognitive distortions, further the development of psychological problems, particularly depression. Psychologists use cognitive behavioral therapy to help you identify and understand how these cognitive distortions affect your lifetime. CBT therapy helps you to alteration, so that these issues will not conception your life.

More and more people are seeking out treatment for depression in the U.S. In the past 15 years, the number of patients being seen has doubled, to 25 million. A sizeable minority of people will battle severe depression at least once – one in four women, and one in eight men. With so many people seeking treatment, it can be hard to find the right therapist for you. How do you choose the right one?

One friend told me to treat it like a shoe buying excursion: try them on until you find a fit. Several other friends who have been in therapy have also given me some suggestions, and here are the criteria that I have heard and found useful in my own search for the right counselor.

• Good listener. Above all, you want to choose a therapist who is a good listener. They should listen more than they talk. Many patients report that this isn’t the case, and that they feel like their therapist doesn’t listen to them. You are paying this person to listen to you, don’t accept one who won’t.
• Open-minded. If you feel like your therapist is judging you during your session, this is not a good sign. You don’t want to have the therapist who is supposed to help you be more positive about yourself making you feel worse instead. You can end up with feelings of unworthiness and lower self-esteem if your therapist is judgmental. Time to switch therapists!
• Helps you find your strengths. Sometimes it is not just about what is wrong, but what is right. Pick a therapist who can help you find what is working in your life, and what strengths you have that you can develop further. This helps self-esteem.
• Holds off on the meds. Many patients report that their therapists were quick to medicate them. Often, therapists wrote out prescriptions during the first session.

Ideally, you have chosen a therapist who will not be in such a hurry to medicate you. You want a therapist to take more time getting to know you so that they can better gauge what medications you need and in what doses.

Sometimes you are just going through a tough time and need help to get you through. Other times it may be just a sympathetic ear you need, someone to talk to. Therapy can provide these things. For it to be beneficial though it is important to choose the right therapist for your needs. You should take a bit of time to shop around before committing to one for treatment.

A friend of mine had to be admitted to hospital and was given ECT as she was on the verge of a mental collapse after her boyfriend left her. The results of that severe depression treatment were long lasting and devastating and she became a bitter and rather difficult person. I must say that this was forty years ago and I wonder what therapy she would be given now. Maybe things have not changed that much.

You can imagine our surprise when her ex boyfriend appeared on Facebook and they now correspond regularly. My friend has taken a philosophical view and has forgiven him. So, there is a sort of happy ending to a rather dramatic story of severe depression treatment.

Severe depression treatment has to take into account many of the rather dramatic symptoms which can be present. There can be complete isolation, suicidal thoughts, paranoia and manic episodes. The feeling that the person is completely detached from every living contact around him or her is one of the greatest challenges in contemplating any alternative treatments for severe depression.

How to deal with the symptoms is nothing short of a enormous challenge. There are voices which take over the person and paranoia and schizophrenia are quite common co-morbid disorders. The patient becomes obsessed and persecution mania can set in so that she feels that she is being spied on all the time.

While anti depressants, psychotherapy and some lifestyle changes can all be part of severe depression treatment, there are other things to consider too. Looking at the alternative treatments for severe depression, it does seem that the anti depressants give the best results in the short term. But they come with heavy side effects such as a loss of sex drive, sedation and other problems. In fact the warnings on the boxes of these medications are the black box ones, which is in fact the maximum warning that the FDA issues.

As the patient comes out of the depression, the alternative treatments for severe depression can be examined and considered. These can range from ECT, psychotherapy and counselling and also herbal remedies. As regards the latter, I have prepared a website outlining how this treatment should never be overlooked. While there are lots of studies on St. John’s Wort also abbreviated to SJW, there are other herbs such as Passion Flower, Gingko Biloba which been proved to be invaluable in the treatment of depression generally.

It may surprise you to know that as many as one person out of every ten suffers from some form of major depression, and of the many millions of sufferers spread across the world, less than 20% receive adequate help or assistance. The WHO, (World Health Organization), states that depression is the world’s fourth largest illness, and it is the greatest root cause of a number of serious disabilities. Depression treatment is an essential, although the types of treatment are both numerous and diverse, and finding the right kind of treatment that will benefit you most, can be quite difficult.

However, if you yourself suffer from depression, or bipolar disorder as it is sometimes known, and you are considering finding help, then you have already taken the first very significant step towards finding a depression treatment that will help you to put your life back again. One of the most common problems that manic depressives face is one of denial. Overcoming this denial is key. Only then will you be able to go about finding professional depression help.

The beginning to finding a cure for most people begins with their own doctors. Doctors have a wealth of experience of dealing with patients suffering from bipolar disorder. In some very severe cases, prescribed medication can help. However, prescription drugs are very invasive and often expose those that take them to unpleasant side effects. There is also a very great fear amongst the medical profession that it is all too easy to become unhealthily dependent on these drugs.

But depression treatment does not have to be drug related. Your doctor may recommend joining a therapy group, and this sort of group activity is known in many cases to provide depression help and support.

The most successful depression treatment, and one that is gaining more and more recognition, both within the medical fraternity, and amongst depressives themselves, is professional counseling. When you embark on a course of depression help via counseling, you will be getting the best analytical support from a trained qualified counselor; someone who knows all there is to know about the various types of depression, what causes depression, and how it can gain the upper hand; but most importantly of all, how to dig down to understand the root cause, and once this is identified, how to go about treating it and getting your life back on track again.

Group therapies can be helpful, and they certainly give you the comfort of knowing that you are not alone, and you can share your experiences with your peers. However, whilst that may help you to come to terms with your condition, it is not a depression treatment as such. It does not tackle the cause; it is directed more to helping to deal with the symptoms; but whilst this is an important depression help tool, it is identifying and treating the cause that will lead to recovery; and that is exactly what professional counseling does.

Your councilor will be able to bond with you in a way that no one else can. Professional councilors are highly skilled practitioners who can gently help you to seek out the underlying cause of your depression, but more importantly, they are have a wealth of knowledge and experience in leading through the tortuous mental mine field, and to put you on the road to recovery, and eventual cure.