How to Treat Depression Without Medication Essay

Whilst it takes higher than a simple “lifestyle change” to effectively strike a medical issue just like depression, it is not more medication that this Region needs really, but rather a larger awareness, better mental well being education and greater access to therapy for all those suffering from this condition.

Depression can be as much a natural, physiological concern as a damaged bone or perhaps heart issue but because it cannot be “seen” it is often disregarded, dismissed, mistreated or over-medicated by the great majority of health care providers. Today’s HMO powered, medication based mostly society is likely to throw pharmaceutical “band-aids” with the problem of depression. A far more holistic, beneficial approach, ideally involving the family/support system of the individual would, over time, be the two a more result and enduring treatment for the patient and even more cost effective as well.

While major depression can, in fact , be helped by the use of appropriate medications, any long-term treatment must consist of counseling/therapy and significant and lasting change in lifestyle. Depression is usually, in fact , the catalyst which includes lead me to go after my current academic and professional aspire to become a Psychiatrist. It is also something that I have a great deal of personal experience with, both being a parent of the clinically despondent teenager as a woman coping with a depressive disorder me personally.

In my personal experience, the majority of doctors are likely to “throw medication” at the issue of depressive disorder, when in fact , for many individuals, therapeutic counselling and psychotherapy is often all that is required. This tendency to medicate first and lawyer second, particularly in teens, can be irreparably harmful. Psychological medicines, by their incredibly nature, impact brain chemistry and can possess huge gloomy effects: taking once life tendencies, physical aggression, dramatic weight gain (which can possess psychological and other medical side effects of its own), to name a few.

These side effects can often instances be more emotionally harming and dangerous to the patient than the major depression itself. More than a decade ago, after many years of struggling, I used to be diagnosed with Content Traumatic Anxiety Disorder. My own personal struggle with despression symptoms has also engaged quite a few medications, with different successes and varying degrees of side-effects. Although searching for a powerful treatment for me personally, my doctors prescribed numerous SSRIs, Beta Blockers and also other commonly recommended medications pertaining to the treatment of depressive disorder.

I fought against with intimate side effects, fat gain, crippling panic and anxiety attacks, suicidal thoughts and even more. In the end, I selected to wean myself from your medication and focus on remedy and the important lifestyle changes that go along with this. It is still a daily have difficulty and a choice to be happy and fight the “demons” that haunt myself, but with the help of God, my children and my personal therapist, My spouse and i am more content and more “well-adjusted” than ever before around me. In a producing brain, like that of a despondent adolescent, these types of potentially hazardous side effects may be even more harmful.

In 2006, My then 18 year old girl, when confronted with depression because of her parents’ divorce and adjustment to life as a great “Army Brat, ” was put on Prozac by her Family Practice Physician. Inside 30 days the lady had to be hospitalized and detoxified after enduring a psychotic episode at school and weeks of suicidal and homicidal thoughts. After a yr of numerous diagnoses, multitudes of various psychological medications and putting on weight of almost eighty pounds, your woman was no more emotionally steady than your woman was once she acquired begun the therapy. With the assistance of a fresh Psychiatrist and first Care Physician, we raised her away all of the emotional medications and in turn enrolled her in occasional, one-on-one therapies with a Psychiatrist.

It took her almost 3 years to undo-options the damage the ability with the hospital and medication tests had caused on her. She’s finally doing well, is stable and uses counseling, deep breathing, breathing techniques and numerous therapeutic equipment to deal with the stresses of life, rather than continuing to get medication-dependent and suffering the medial side effects of all those medications.