Treating Depression

Depression should be treated like any other human illness, and like other physical illnesses it can often be healed with prescription drugs. Having said that, it can also frequently be dealt with without drugs, through psychotherapy.

Psychotherapy unfortunately also has a stigma linked to it in the minds of many people, but it is nothing more than a kind of counselling where the depressed person is given an occasion to chat about life and the way they feel. The very procedure of being able to talk about pain and woe in a non-judgemental setting can have an hugely healing effect, especially for those who are suffering mild or moderate cases of depression. Severely depressed persons do not normally benefit from psychotherapy and counselling to the same extent. Severe depression normally requires supplementing counselling with other depression treatments. Even so, counselling is not only a good starting point in the process, but a qualified counsellor will generally be the best person to provide advice as to the need for additional treatment.

Severe depression requires medication and at times hospitalisation. Even then, it can regularly take some time to get treatment right, as there are a array of antidepressant drugs available on the market and some of them can have unsafe side-effects.

Part of the reason for the popularity of antidepressants such as Prozac or Zoloft is that they often have limited side-effects, apart from a regular loss of libido, and hence are relatively safe to prescribe. However such drugs do not work at all for some people who may require 'tricyclics' such as Vivactil, Norpramin or Pamelor. The problem with tricyclics is that it can cause problems for those already suffering with heart disease, and getting the correct dosage right is far more problematic than with Prozac or Zoloft. People certainly have been known to gravely overdose on tricyclics.

These issues highlight the need for antidepressant medication to be administered by a trained psychiatrist and not by a general practitioner. A good psychiatrist will also be the best person to judge if the individual must be hospilatised.

For those who need to be hospitalized, electric shock therapy (ECT) is another form of treatment that has proven very advantageous to some people. This is generally only used with people who have rare and harsh symptoms of depression and who have become manic. ECT is typically only considered for those who have not been successful on antidepresasnt medication and when all other kinds of treatment have failed to make the symptoms of the depression less severe.

ECT involves electrical stimulation that causes the brain to seizure in order to reduce the depression. While this sounds terrible, this treatment should not be connected with the torturous forms of shock therapy frequently shown in the cinema. Today, patients who are given ECT you are also given muscle relaxants so as to eliminate all discomfort and pain. ECT is generally used in conjunction with both antidepressant medication and counselling. Sometimes the ECT will permit a person to become free of a depressive episode after which they will be able to take care of their equilibrium through the use of normal antidepressants.

Dealing effectively with depression can obviously be very demanding, and the cost (financially as well as physically) can be high, but these costs generally pale in comparison to the toll taken by depression that is left untreated.