Get enough sleep, eat well, and exercise regularly. Reach out to family and friends when times get hard. Get regular medical checkups, and see your provider if you don't feel right. Get help if you think you're depressed.
Depression can have severe effects on your mental well-being and your physical health. It can cause chronic illness and pain, put you at risk of developing a substance abuse disorder, give rise to self-destructive behaviors, erode your personal relationships, and shorten your lifespan.
Three of the more common methods used in depression treatment include cognitive behavioral therapy, interpersonal therapy, and psychodynamic therapy.
Depression causes the hippocampus to raise its cortisol levels, impeding the development of neurons in your brain. The shrinkage of brain circuits is closely connected to the reduction of the affected part's function. While other cerebral areas shrink due to high levels of cortisol, the amygdala enlarges.
Some of the most commonly used include: Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), such as citalopram (Celexa), escitalopram oxalate (Lexapro), fluoxetine (Prozac), fluvoxamine (Luvox), paroxetine HRI (Paxil), and sertraline (Zoloft).
There's no cure for depression, but there are lots of effective treatments. People can recover from depression and live long and healthy lives.
Some people find complementary and alternative therapies helpful to manage stress and other common symptoms of mental health problems. These can include things like yoga, meditation, aromatherapy, hypnotherapy, herbal remedies and acupuncture.
People who are depressed are far more likely to have other chronic medical conditions, including cardiovascular disease, back problems, arthritis, diabetes, and high blood pressure, and to have worse outcomes. Untreated depression can even affect your immune response to some vaccines.
There's no cure for depression, but you still have plenty of options for treatment, all of which can improve your symptoms and minimize their impact on your daily life. You might think, “But if my symptoms go away, that means I'm cured, right?” Not exactly.
Under American Psychiatric Association guidelines, if you are taking an antidepressant for your first depressive episode, you should stay on it for at least 4 or 5 months after your symptoms of depression stop.
For people with chronic or severe depression, medication may be needed on a long-term basis. In these cases, antidepressants are often taken indefinitely. That is, in part, because depression is not an illness that can be cured.
Depression may cause the release of glucocorticoid in the brain, a type of steroid that can damage the hippocampus and other areas of the central nervous system. When this occurs, you may experience symptoms associated with neurocognitive disorder (dementia), such as memory loss.
Once a patient starts taking an antidepressant that is effective, they may start to see changes in 2 weeks, while other patients may not see a change in their symptoms for four to six weeks. Some patients may need to take antidepressants for over a year before achieving remission.
Conclusions: The findings suggest that self-reported personality traits do not change after a typical episode of major depression. Future studies are needed to determine whether such change occurs following more severe, chronic, or recurrent episodes of depression.
Depression is a serious disorder that can take a terrible toll on you and your family. Depression often gets worse if it isn't treated, resulting in emotional, behavioral and health problems that affect every area of your life.
A: Depression is a clinical illness, while unhappiness is a state of mind. With depression, you actually have symptoms like slowed thought and movement, a despairing sense of the future, an inability to feel pleasure or find meaning, and ongoing thoughts of suicide.