Understanding Depression In Order To Deal With It

Depression, being depressed – terms used exaggeratingly today, which in medical and psychological term, mean something far worse. It’s natural for a person to feel sad, especially if something unpleasant has happened in the recent days, but such feelings usually pass away in a couple of days. When they start being persistent, and they start interfering with the normal function of a person, that’s when it is appropriate to call them “depression”.
Depression is a common mood disorder that can be treated with psychotherapy (we Danes use the term lære mere om psykoterapi), as long as it is properly identified by a specialist. All of its symptoms are fairly obvious, but there are several different types of depression.
The most severe, major depressive disorder, can be a very frightening condition, in which the person feels sudden loss of interest in any of the activities they once enjoyed, low energy and feelings of helplessness and sadness. Major depression can be experienced in a single episode, but most patients experience several episodes, each with a duration of up to a few months, which makes it so scary , since suicidal thoughts are not uncommon. In fact, nearly 5% of all the major depressive disorder patients choose to terminate their lives because of how they feel.
Dysthymic depressive disorder is another type of depression, in which the person exhibits quite more bearable symptoms, and his condition is better than that of people who suffer from major depressive disorder. In this case, however , the duration of each depression is rather longer – about a year or two years, which is quite a lot of time and can entirely change your perception of life or lead you to miss a lot of opportunities, which is what makes this disorder equally frightening as the major depressive disorder.
There are several other shorter-timed episodic types of depression, like post-partum depression which occurs due to the hormonal imbalance in young mothers, when their baby leaves the uterus. Another type of disorder is linked to the regular cycle of the weather and the changes in daylight – this disorder is called seasonal affective disorder, and it occurs when some people lose their energy and willingness in the cold winter months. To treat them ,a special type of light therapy is used. Each of these specific types of depression is not that long-lasting and can be treated more easily with just a few sessions of psychotherapy.
It is a psychotherapist’s job to be able to spot and differentiate between the various type of mood disorders, such as depressions or manias, in order to be able to treat the patient well. Sometimes, the psychotherapist will use the help of specific medication , such as antidepressants or other such types of medicine to stabilize the patient first, and then address his issues through psychotherapy. Sometimes just psychotherapy will be enough to treat the difficulties of a patient, because most of the times people just lack an outlet to their emotional states, or put in simpler words – there is no one to listen to their problems, and that’s why they feel sad.