Modern society is becoming more and more competitive, and the various pressures people face are becoming more and more intense. Depression is like a ghost that comes silently along with these pressures, shrouding your emotions in gloom, never seeing the sunlight again and not knowing how to rejoice. What should I do if I have depression? How to get out of the depression haze?
1. Understand depression
Depression is a kind of mental illness with high incidence, high recurrence rate and great difficulty in treatment. It is a persistent and recurrent low mood disease, and the patient’s low mood is manifested by negative low self-esteem such as lack of self-confidence and guilt towards others. Patients with depression may feel bored with food, lose interest in life, and have a long-term negative mood and slow reaction, and usually develop self-harm or suicidal tendencies when the condition is severe.
2. Receive professional psychological treatment
If you find yourself or your family members suffer from depression, please make sure to seek help from professional institutions and personnel in time. Receive psychological treatment through professional psychological counseling. The general method of psychotherapy is to be in a quiet environment, calm yourself down, and face the changes that lead to your depression head-on. You can write about your recent personal situation and various encounters to find out what is most painful to you, face the reality and confront your pain.
During the counseling process, the counselor will accept, understand and tolerate the patient, help the patient sort out conflicts and contradictions, and guide the patient to cope positively, to find solutions to problems, to manage their emotions, and to get along better with themselves and society.
3. Follow medical advice and take medication on time
Medication is the most important form of treatment other than psychotherapy. Medication is divided into western medicine and Chinese medicine, such as tricyclic and tetracyclic antidepressants, monoamine oxidase inhibitors, 5-hydroxytryptamine reuptake inhibitors, etc.
When taking antidepressants, patients must be under the guidance of a psychiatrist and adhere to the treatment principle of “adequate amount, adequate course, and full course”, and take the medication on time.
4. Choose physical therapy
In addition to medication, there are physical therapy options for depression in hospitals. The common physical treatment methods for depression are electric convulsion therapy and repetitive transcranial stimulation therapy.
Electroconvulsive therapy, mainly through the implementation of effective electrical stimulation of the central nervous system, causes the synchronization of the cerebral cortex, resulting in general convulsions, transient loss of consciousness and other conditions, mostly for the following patients: those who are ineffective in medication, or those who do not tolerate the adverse effects of medication; patients with negative sexual behavior or suicidal tendencies.
Repetitive transcranial stimulation is a treatment that involves the use of coils to form a high magnetic field, combined with the application of induction currents to specific areas of the brain to alter the neurological function of the brain. It is the first choice of non-pharmacological treatment for patients with depressive disorders and has the advantage of being non-invasive, but there are problems such as headache, skin damage at the stimulation site, mania, etc. About 10-30% of patients will also have headache.
5. Self-regulation, gradually recover the lost confidence
Actively develop self-confidence and enthusiasm for life. Choose one or two things that you were most confident in before depression, such as playing chess, games, ball games, cooking, etc., and insist on doing them for a few hours every day, which can greatly re-establish your confidence. This can be a distraction, and you can enjoy the joy of success, breaking the emotional propriety and washing away the pain. By accomplishing simple things little by little, the patient can gradually recover the once lost self-confidence and re-establish the self-confidence system, paving the way for the patient to return to society in the future.
At the same time, patients should also communicate more with people and actively participate in some social activities. Good interpersonal relationships can teach patients how to change and correct incorrect behaviors, and can also make patients happy. Maintaining a good mood is the basis for treating depression.
Reference.
[1]Zhang Jun,Fan Jiaxuan, et al. Is depression just a bad mood [J]. Health Expo. 2020,2: 8-10
[2]Ma Qin. About depression[J]. Diet and Health. 2017,12,4(28):394
[3]Tan Jiang. The things about depression [J]. Science of health,2022,8:95
[4] Luo Aihua. Depression [J]. Oriental medicine. 2020,8: 254
[5] Cheng, Lan. What is the difference between depression and anxiety disorders [J]. World abstract of the latest medical information (continuous electronic journal). 2020,20(42): 276