I. The severity of depression
After the basic solution of food and clothing and the success of career, how to improve the quality of one’s life? This has become the biggest personal development issue that every modern person is very concerned about.
As the pace of life accelerates and social competition becomes more and more fierce, the pressure of people’s work and life increases day by day, and anxiety and depression become the most common psychological problems that plague people’s mental and physical health and affect the quality of work and life. Living with a sense of well-being then becomes the first key to maintaining mental health and improving the quality of life. Depression is the absence of happiness!
Second, the main psychological manifestations of depression
According to the severity of depression, depression disorder can be divided into major depression and minor depression. Major depression, commonly known as “depression”, is divided into monophasic and biphasic disorders; mild depression is called “bad mood”.
1.Clinical manifestations of depression
Patients feel pessimistic, depressed, sad, helpless, hopeless, worthless, slow thinking and speech, reduced speech and movement, sitting still, sighing, closed, unwilling to interact with others, even bedridden, and have difficulty taking care of themselves. The patient may have suspicion of illness, self-blame, lack of joy and pleasure in life, lack of inner motivation and enthusiasm for life, loss of appetite and libido, physical weakness, difficulty sleeping or waking up early, severe suicidal ideation, or repeated suicidal behavior.
Depressed mood will often be characterized by morning heaviness and evening lightness. About two-thirds of the patients will be accompanied by significant anxiety and fear.
2, bad mood
Bad mood is a mild depressive disorder, which is common in real life (so the prevalence of depression is as high as 5%, of which this type of patient accounts for the major proportion). This type of patients, because there is no abnormality in appearance, the depressive mood is buried deep inside, the person himself does not always recognize himself, and the surrounding people, including his family and relatives, cannot understand and recognize, which often makes the disease long delayed and unresolved, not only causes heavy pain to himself and affects the function, but more importantly, leads to the deterioration of the disease and the avoidable light-hearted behavior.
An important feature of mild depression (bad mood) is the presence of symptoms of “internal bitterness and external happiness”. These patients do not appear to have any abnormal behavior in terms of behavior, speech and contact, and if they do not undergo in-depth psychiatric examination and psychological assessment, they may even give a false impression of happiness and optimism if they ignore the essence of mental depression. If we do in-depth psychiatric examination and psychological measurement, we can find out that the patient has painful pessimism, thoughtfulness, low self-esteem and negativity, decline of energy, physical strength and mental power that cannot be eliminated by oneself, serious and persistent insomnia, and many kinds of physical discomfort and other signs. These patients often have unexplained physical discomfort that is difficult to eliminate on their own, and cannot be eliminated by taking Chinese and Western medicines or taking sick leave, recuperation, recreation, or drinking.
People with a bad state of mind are also characterized by decreased social functioning, long-term stubborn insomnia, etc. The duration of the disease is more than two years, and the remission time is not more than two months. They suffer from internal pain, seek medical help many times, do various physical examinations, spend a lot of energy and money, but do not get effective help.
Third, the causes of depression
Bipolar depression (manic depression) has obvious family heritability. In addition to biological and genetic causes, depression, especially poor state of mind, is often related to the following psychological factors
1.Psychological stress: about 50% of the patients had received serious psychological blows when they first got the disease, such as bad job, promotion and promotion, betrayal by friends, death of relatives, etc.
2, personality characteristics: personality straight, enthusiastic and cheerful, idealistic, ambitious, cautious, pursuit of perfection, absolutely idealistic, moral, strict discipline, insecurity, low self-confidence and self-esteem, introversion, poor interpersonal communication, etc.
3.Early childhood experience: early childhood often had a psychological trauma experience such as abandonment, neglect, rough criticism, sexual abuse, etc.
Fourth, the solution of depression
Severe depression, especially depression with suicidal tendency, should be detected early, timely medical treatment, early diagnosis and drug combined with psychotherapy, generally can achieve better treatment results, can reduce the incidence of suicide, improve the cure rate and reduce the rate of disability.
Patients with a bad state of mind should also pay attention to early identification, even if they seek medical attention, and should mainly undergo psychotherapy, especially self-improvement of personality, to face and effectively deal with various stresses and strains in life.
”The upper doctor treats the untreated disease”. People with depression should actively adopt the principle of “prevention-oriented” to prevent it before it happens. When we have anxiety but not obvious depression, we should pay attention to self-psychological adjustment, learn more about mental health care and apply it in our own life.
V. Group psychotherapy for depression
Psychotherapy can be divided into individual psychotherapy and group psychotherapy.
People with depression often have some personality characteristics, environmental stressors and psychological problems in negative thinking and coping styles. Individual psychotherapy, through long-term cooperation with a psychotherapist, can explore the causes of these psychological problems and effective solutions together. However, during individual psychotherapy, the therapist becomes the only person the visitor communicates with, and the visitor tends to become empathic, or, the therapist’s personal resources are limited and his or her communication can be greatly limited.
VI. A few basic suggestions for depressed mood
1. More ways and sources of happiness.
Depression is the absence of joy! Depression is that those ways that once made us happy, now become suddenly invalid, and we have not found more new ways to get happy. For example, a person, from childhood to adulthood, who excels in his studies if that is the only source he gets happiness, is prone to depression once his grades drop or he graduates from college. If in addition to study and work, we have more happy ways to chat with friends, travel, photography, fishing, sunbathing, etc. When work and study encounter pressure, when the mood is a little depressed, we can get happy through other ways, can be self-regulation of depression.
2, more close friends.
An important source of happiness is from the interaction between friends, and friends together, activities, mutual concern, help each other, share the joy, share the sorrow. More friends, the possibility of depression will be less.
3, improve the personality, change the negative thinking.
People live in this world, the most important thing is to adapt to the environment, not simply to indulge in their own beautiful fantasies. Beautiful fantasy, close your eyes and think a thousand times, ten thousand times, although beautiful and intoxicating, but when we open our eyes, we will find that it is all a fantasy. Reality is always imperfect, and wishes and ideals are often difficult to achieve. We cannot complain about reality and others, nor can we always think of various dangers and bad endings because our ideals and wishes are always unattainable. If a person always thinks of bad endings and can’t enjoy life, and can’t think of hope and light inside because of inner insecurity, this is the negative thinking that people with depression disorder often have. In life, we should pay attention to tell ourselves that we cannot do things based on wishes and ideals alone, but we should be good at understanding society and respecting reality, accepting the imperfection and cruelty of reality, and living life as usual and impermanent. We have to gradually learn to go with the flow and do what is right. We also need to remind ourselves that things are two-sided, each thing is the unity of opposites, there is no absolute good, there is no absolute bad, for example, “the Sejong misses the horse, but does not know that it is not a blessing”. When the state of affairs to the worst degree, often change, will be towards the positive side of development, that is, the opposite of what is.
4, positive action.
When depression appears, due to the role of negative thinking, we tend to think more, do less, the less action, the more depressed, the more they will feel that they are not capable, no value. Therefore, how should we regulate our behavior when depression appears? It is recommended that, regardless of whether we are depressed or not, we should “be smart in words and smart in deeds”. Instead of thinking too much and thinking of many bad endings, we should act first when we are not thinking of perfection, and drive our thinking by action, and act, think and perfect. Tell yourself that every day you should do more things that you can do, very simple things (such as brushing dishes, planting flowers, etc.), do things that you usually want to do but do not have time to do, do things that used to bring us joy when we were young, do things that you like, do things that you have never done before, and preferably engage in some “something out of nothing” Creative activities. Because, as a man is superior in thinking, he is great in acting. Action, and action alone, is the single most effective force for transforming the world and transforming oneself.