Depression Treatment

Unfortunately, most people suffering from depression do not understand that they are sick, and therefore do not consider necessary to seek for a medical help. They wonder: how to get rid of depression?

Nowadays many men of the street do not know how to treat depression effectively. However, the treatment of the first signs of depression trouble not only them. The effective help for depression is still not only the task of psychiatrists, but also psychotherapists. The successful depression treatment requires a biological therapy, psychotherapy and a number of social measures aimed to improvement of the patient’s status.

The spontaneous recovery by lingering depression is quite uncommon and forms about 10% of all cases. At that, the return of depression happens within the next 2-4 years.

The effectiveness of the depression treatment depends on its clinical presentation and on the adequacy of therapeutic intervention. The biological treatment of depression first of all includes pharmacological therapy. At the same time for the biological treatment of depression may be used: electroconvulsive therapy, sleep deprivation, phototherapy, dietetic therapy, phototherapy, efferent treatment methods and other biological modalities on the patient’s body. Among the pharmacotherapy of depression more often are used antidepressants, however during the therapy of this disease are also spread other medications: tranquilizers, neuroleptics, vitamins, hormones, antioxidants, the lithium, medicines that improve the metabolism in brain cells and influence the immune system.

It should be noted, that antidepressants can also be effective by the treatment of anxiety, impulsive obsessions, migraine, bulimia, vegetative crisis, and even by removal of different pains, because antidepressants usually raise pain threshold. The treatment of depression signs can be conducted with the help of psychotherapy. In order to get rid of depression patients aspire themselves to this form of medical and psychological aid. A great while, depressed patient can’t bring himself to ingestion, and starting the intake of antidepressants, he quite often ceases the pharmacotherapy of depression.

By virtue of helplessness and constant doubts, patients are usually suggestible and while reading the annotations of one or another drug, they easily find by themselves side effects in the first days of the treatment. Besides, depressed patients have functional disorders of internal organs and thereby are really sensitive to some side-effects. Many patients experience a false alarm living in constant dependence on antidepressants. The main part of the patients, suffering from depression, is a placebo – reactors, i. e. people who are easily responsive to even «blank tablets», which generally do not contain any active materials. All aspects listed above determine the heighten interest of such patients in the psychotherapy.

A major argument, which testifies the role of psychotherapy in depression treatment, is the experimental data, which show the importance of psychological factors in the formation of therapeutic resistance of depression to medical products. The effective course of psychotherapy in long-range outlook is likely more useful than pharmacotherapy, because it teaches the patient. The last one acquires the skills of overcoming depression. It learns to recognize its approximation, as well as to prevent its recurrence. According to the results of many studies, the normalization of endocrine indicators during the depression therapy is achieved not only by the process of treatment with antidepressants, but also by psychotherapy. The influence of psychotherapy upon the endocrine indicators is observed both in its combination with psychopharmacological therapy and in the case of its using like a single treatment.

In a number of cases, psychotherapy allows patients to adapt to real life. With an independent therapeutic effect, psychotherapy promotes the optimal collaboration of the patient and a physician. It also improves the efficiency of medical treatment, as well as family relationships and professional status of the patient.

The frequent depression after acute trauma or lingering stress leads to a persistent search of its origin. This circumstance strengthens the patients` aspiration for psychological help. However, an excessive overestimation of its abilities, unfortunately can lead to complete repudiation of psychoactive drugs, as well as to formation of resistant and lingering kinds of depression and to its early exacerbations. For patients the issue how to treat depression remains open.

From the doctor’s point of view the psychotherapy of depression should be primarily aimed at removal of depression symptoms. Some of them are more sensitive to psychotherapy, and other come relatively difficult under its influence. It is assumed that by severe depressions the possibilities of psychotherapy are more limited than in light cases. As targets of psychotherapeutic effects they choose mood disorder, behavioral disorder, motivational and physiological symptoms. Among affective symptoms - is sadness, feeling of guilt and shame and especially anxiety.