voiceofdepression.com

While it is perfectly normal to feel sad or down in response to a lost job, a disappointment or other difficult moment in your life, when feelings of sadness or being down last for several weeks and start to interfere with everyday life, it may be depression. Depression is a real psychological disease or syndrome and depression has been estimated to affect millions of people worldwide. Depression symptoms often vary from person to person, but people who are feeling down for more than several weeks, may be clinically depressed.

Learning about the signs, symptoms and causes is a first step toward overcoming depression. Depression can be overwhelming and will ultimately interfere with daily life, interfering with work, study, sleeping, eating and the ability to enjoy activities. In addition to prolonged sadness, here are some of the major symptoms of (clinical) depression:

• Grief
• Feelings of anger or irritable mood
• Fatigue / Lack of energy
• Loss of interest in once pleasurable activities
• In some patients: Thoughts of suicide or suicide attempts
• Low or sad mood (lasting more than several weeks)
• Changes in appetite: over-eating or not eating enough
• Despair/ feelings of helplessness
• Feelings of hopelessness/guilt
• Trouble with concentration or difficulties with memory
• Persistent headaches, digestive problems, aches or pains
• Changes in sleep: either insomnia or over-sleeping. The majority of patients with depression suffer from sleep difficulties

Depression may be caused by a variety of factors, including environmental factors, malnutrition, genetic background, neurotransmitter malfunctioning, trauma and chronic stress. Depression is frequently treated by a combination of psychotherapy and the use of antidepressant drugs. Old-fashioned treatments such as electroconvulsant shock therapy are not being used very often.

The theory behind depression focuses almost entirely on an imbalance of neurotransmitters in the brain. Neurotransmitters are the agents that facilitate communication between nerve cells. The main neurotransmitters are the monoamines serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrin.

Most modern medications prescribed for depression work by increasing the availability of the monoamine neurotransmitters, norepinephrine and serotonin in the synapse (the small space between nerve cells). Some antidepressants may also increase the monoamine dopamine. This causes the monoamines to stay in the synapse longer, prolonging the signal transfer between nerve cells.

While the monoamine hypothesis of depression has been the focus of many research studies, the theory has also been criticized. This is because some antidepressant medications work well in depressed patients despite the fact that they do not influence the monoamine pathway. In addition, studies that aimed to deplete monoamine neurotransmitters in test subjects (depressed patients and non-depressed controls) did not result in depression in healthy subjects and did not increase depression symptoms in depressed patients.

Antidepressant medications being prescribed today are considered a lot safer than their precursors (they have less dangerous side effects). In the past, depression was often treated with tricyclic compounds or with monoamine oxidase inhibitors (monoamine oxidases are enzymes that break down monoamines, such as norepinephrin and serotonin). Patients taking monoamine inhibitor drugs need to follow a strict diet low in tyramine and histamine in order to prevent a potential hypertensive crisis (which can be deadly). Fermented foods are high in histamine and tyramine.

While modern antidepressant drugs have less side effects than older antidepressants, most people are still uncomfortable with side effects. One of the major side effects is that serotonin and norepinephrin re-uptake inhibitors can increase suicidal thoughts in teenagers and young adults. In 2004, the FDA recommended that manufacturers of antidepressants include the so-called “black-box” warning about this risk.

Patients taking antidepressant drugs also worry about potential sexual side effects. This is a major issue with many antidepressant drugs (drugs such as nefazodone and bupropion have fewer sexual side-effects). While depressed patients usually have lower libido, they consider sexual side effects of antidepressants to be a hurdle in their therapy. Often just lowering the dose, taking the drug right before sleeping or switching to a different antidepressant may provide relief.

In addition to psychotherapy and antidepressant drugs, natural antidepressant treatments have gained popularity in recent years. Herbal-based treatments for depression often contain extracts of St. John’s Wort (Hypericum perforatum). St. John’s wort is used as an alternative treatment for depression and is considered to have fewer side effects than common antidepressant drugs. St. John’s wort cannot be taken together with antidepressant drugs, since St. John’s wort also raises serotonin levels. At present, it is still unclear how St. John’s wort raises serotonin levels.

Depression is a real disease with psychological and physiological symptoms and can be treated successfully. If you think you may have depression, talk to someone who can help or to your doctor with whom you can discuss the variety of treatment options that are available. With the right treatment, you can overcome depression and gain control over your life.

What Is Depression?

Depression is a mood disorder described as having both physical and psychological warning signs that can be detrimental to a persons normal daily life. When depressed you often suffer from bad sleeping habits, crying spells, anxiety, worry, bad, inability to concentrate, body pain, stomach disturbances and a lack of interest in activities you formerly liked doing.

In the late nineteen nineties, the NIH’s Office of Alternative Medicine financed a study at the University of Arizona. Working with acupuncturist who devised a 16-week trial on 34 seriously depressed women. First they worked up a standard treatment plan that targeted certain “depression points” on the body. Then they devised a mock treatment plan using needles in nonspecific points. The acupuncturists administering the needles had no idea whether they were using the real plan or the fake plan.

The criteria for clinical depression. Only five people dropped out of the study, two moved away, one became pregnant, and two didn’t like being poked with needles.

This study puts forward the notion that using acupuncture as a standalone treatment could be as effective as other types of treatments for relieving depression symptoms typically used in Western medicine, such as psychotherapy and drugs. These results are promising enough that the United Nations World Health Organization has approved acupuncture as a treatment for depression. Further clinical trials with larger samples are deemed necessary to endorse this new hope for relief.

A significant advantage using acupuncture for depression was the low cost and lack of side affects compared to conventional treatment.

No Need To Fear The Needles

The acupuncturist uses very small needles inserted at specific places in the body to achieve effects. The acupuncturist uses needles that are hygienic to prevent any type of infection. These needles are much thinner than the needles that people are used to when they are in need of a traditional shot. It feels like a mosquito bite without the itching.

Adolescent mental health concerns are more common than most people want to admit. As parents, we need to think that our children are normal, if not perfect. Although this is normally far from the fact even in the healthiest families, learning that you have a child with a harsh mental illness can be completely devastating for parents. Basically, adolescent mental health disorders come in two flavors. There are the disorders that are simply the product of adolescents – anxiety, depression, and that sort of thing – and those which become active during adolescence and then don’t go away.

When my Johnny started having adolescent mental health issues , I would not even admit it to myself. I figured that he was just going through a phase . Nonetheless, when he started engaging in self-destructive behaviors, losing contact with the family and getting worse and worse grades, I knew that something had to be done. I lastly faced my worst fear. My son was not normal. He was a good child, but he needed professional psychiatric care. If my son had schizophrenia or some other chronic disease, the prognosis would have been quite a bit bleaker. As an adolescent with chronic anxiety and depression problems , however, he wasn’t destined to face lifelong troubles in the same way.

Of course, finding a good doctor for him was extremely difficult. In many communities, there is a severe shortage of decent adolescent mental health care. You need the best psychiatrist for your adolescent – someone who can be a mentor and role model as well as an excellent doctor. Acute care was alright – there was a hospital that would take him in almost instantly – but finding the sort of long-term care that I really felt he needed was more difficult. Adolescent mental health problems often do improve within a few weeks to a few years, but that still leaves the problem of finding treatment in the meantime. It has to be a decision you take together too. You have to to poise your observations and the opinions of your teenager to find somebody who they can actually work with.

It turns out that I was right. The psychiatrist that I found was an specialist in treating adolescent mental health disorders. He treated teenagers with bipolar disorder, acute anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, and lots of other health problems. He actually worked on a referral basis with the acute treatment clinic that my son went to, so I got his name after the first physician didn’t work out. I could tell that my kid liked him a lot, and I held him in the highest esteem. It seemed like the first good break that we had gotten since this whole trial began, and I was optimistic that more constructive developments would follow.