How Can Therapists Help With Depression?

By September 3, 2018Depression

Depression is a serious condition that is currently affecting many people. It causes people to feel sad and empty, and it can also alter their thinking patterns as well as their health. Depression’s symptoms can vary; the most common ones are anxiety, anger, and sadness. As someone experiences these common symptoms, it makes it difficult for them to live normally and it may even lead people to consider suicide.

What Causes Depression?

Depression can be caused by changes in a person’s brain. Serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine are neurotransmitters that provide our brain with feelings of happiness and pleasure. People suffering with depression can alter these neurotransmitters which will negate these feelings, and enable the person to feel sadness more often instead.

Depression may also be caused by current situations they may be in, such as having debt they can’t think of ways to pay, a recent divorce, a loss of a loved one, or being bullied. These situations can be stressful and traumatic which can trigger depression.

Depression is often diagnosed more in woman than in men. These statistics may be skewed, however, because men are less likely to seek treatment. Men with depression are often shown anger rather than sadness. Although anger is dominant in men, some studies have found that men that are depressed with sadness are more likely to attempt suicide. However, depression in women can lead to more suicide attempts. They may experience a form of depression like premenstrual dysphoria. This is where they may experience depression before their period, and during their period, the symptoms may only get worse.

How Can Therapists Help?

There are many helpful therapies one with depression can take. Depending on the counselor they seek help from, each have their own ways to help with depression. The most common therapies counselors will often advise those with depression to take are talk therapy and cognitive behavior therapy.

Talk therapy allows a person to give the therapist all their thoughts and basically allow them to let out all their thoughts. The therapist will then work with that person toward a solution to the cause of their depression. Cognitive behavior therapy helps a person recognize thoughts that lead to their negative emotions. The therapist will then see which thoughts may be the cause of their depression and try to change them.

Other forms of therapy are dialectical behavior therapy and Interpersonal therapy. Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is another form of cognitive behavior therapy where the therapist recognizes what the person is feeling and tells them that what they are feeling is understandable. They will then try to alter those negative habits or disruptive behavior. Interpersonal therapy focuses on what is currently happening and attempts to help the person change. Therapists will often try to teach skills that may help lessen their symptoms.

There are many more therapies used to treat depression. Therapists that treat depression are all experts in diagnosing what a specific person needs to help cure their symptoms. This is why if you think you have a friend or relative that may be experiencing symptoms of depression, then you should encourage them to seek aid immediately.

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