How To Deal With Depression
With resources all around us, you would think it would be easy for a person to deal with depression. But if someone is already feeling depressed, finding the time and energy to make a good ‘college try’ at investigating an effective treatment is often too much trouble. There IS help from your primary doctor (if you have one), but if you’d rather check out alternative treatment methods, you may have more difficulty; it’s not easy to be sure which alternative medicine practitioners are genuine and reliable.
…After all, we’re talking about a field of medicine fraught with controversy and differing approaches to treatment to begin with.
On the medical side, the Mayo Clinic website (www.mayoclinic.com) lists several possibilities to deal with depression on its depression/depressive disorder major page. It mentions various types of antidepressants, as well as psychotherapy, light therapy, and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).
…The first two options are the standard approaches, but they can also be time-consuming. Sometimes it’s as hard to find the right drug as it is to find a therapist. But the latter treatments are a bit controversial, and haven’t always been regarded as legitimate, medically effective treatments. ECT has gone in and out of vogue, for example, because of the disturbing side effects and results, and the uncertainty over jolting the brain with electricity.
…You may have seen the ’70′s movie starring Jack Nicholson called, “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.” In it, Nicholson’s character gets ECT or Electroshock Therapy several times, each time coming out looking and acting like a zombie. Nevertheless, advanced versions of ECT are being used with surprising effectiveness today. These much fancier treatments only share the same name as the old methods of Electrochock therapy; the actual treatment is not nearly the same.
Light treatments that were used to help people with seasonal affective disorder (SAD), have sometimes been placed on the “alternative treatments” side of the equation. It’s here where there is the widest variation in methods of depression treatment. The alternatives, which are all based on something other than standard western medicine, can include everything from acupuncture and biofeedback, to color and aroma therapies. They’re not necessarily unscientific, often using a natural depression treatment involving vitamins and diet. Regardless, some alternative ideas have still not been tested enough to know if they’re truly reliable.
Some doctors now try to find the best of both worlds in a multidisciplinary approach to depression treatment. This can involve not just medical doctors and psychotherapists, but social workers, dieticians, and even job counselors, depending on the patient and the circumstances.
Alternative methods of treatment can also be introduced in the same way that ‘official’ medical treatment methods would be. If the depressed person has an open-minded primary care physician, then he or she will have help to find the very best treatments among all of the options. This is where getting a second and third opinion from 2 or more doctors is very helpful – and could very well mean the difference between success and failure of treatments.
