Treatment for Depression

Explore the wide variety of options for those suffering from depression...

treatment for depression

Left untreated, depression turns sinister - or deadly as the primary cause of suicide in the U.S. - but like other illnesses and diseases, modern medicine and rapidly advancing scientific research has tamed this challenging condition, making it less menacing and increasingly more manageable.

No one today who suffers with depression and its distressful symptoms needs to suffer alone or without hope. Even for the 7 million Americans who live with the most extreme, resistant form of depression, scientists are aggressively researching and testing alternative forms of treatments.

As anyone with depression will testify, living with this condition is not easy, nor is there a quick fix. Treatment involves psychotherapy or medication, or a combination of the two. For severe depression that has failed to respond to treatment, different forms of electromagnetic and brain stimulation options are possibilities.

And most of those suffering with the disorder report a lifelong effort to manage the symptoms, similar to those who live with physical forms of chronic pain that lack quick remedies or cures. But over the past several decades, researchers have extensively researched both the medications and the therapies that help the 21 million Americans who suffer with various types of mood disorders – another name for the many types of depression. (see article on Types of Depression.)

From this research, an array of tools is now used based on a large body of evidence-based research studies. Patients learn how to use these tools from therapists well trained in treating depression and its consequences.

Some of the most commons treatments for depression center on the following options:

Psychotherapy for depression

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Wouldn’t it be great to have a magical psychological tool similar to a Pensieve used in the famous Harry Potter books and movies? This stone basin stores the users’ thoughts – specifically memories – and as users peer into it, they see these thoughts swirling as silver threads. Using a magic wand, a user pulls out a thought or memory, examining and analyzing it.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) encourages patients to look into the “Pensieve” of their brains, extracting specific thoughts or cognitions. Together with the patient, the therapist analyzes these thoughts, questioning assumptions, theories, and beliefs that the patient attaches to them. Most depressive thoughts are not fact based, but instead form around more skewed realities and unjustified, distorted beliefs.

Faulty beliefs and thoughts motivate people to act dysfunctionally, according to cognitive behavioral theorists. So once an individual re-engineers his or her thoughts, better ways of behaving and living become a natural consequence.

For more information on how therapists use CBT to treat depression, see Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Depression.

Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Depression

Even without laboratories full of scanners, test tubes, and computers, lofty scientific hypotheses and scores of clinical trials, most of us acknowledge that having close friends and supportive family members make life richer, more worthwhile.

Our interpersonal interactions matter, in other words, in how we feel overall about life and our significance in a world filled with stress and complexity. We need other people to live and to enjoy the kind of lives that most of us care to live.

But as a bonus, science also has proven this fact.

According to the “Oxford Textbook of Psychotherapy,” edited by Glen O. Gabbard, Judith S. Beck, and Jeremy Holmes, having close relationships or feeling supported by someone protects against depression. The book bases this statement on empirical research conducted in the 1970s and 1990s.

Interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) is a form of therapy that addresses mental health disorders within the context of social relationships and interactions. The practice focuses on the fact that individuals don’t live in isolation but within psychosocial contexts that directly play a role in mental health.

Today IPT is used to treat a number of mental health disorders, but it was first developed for the treatment of major depressive disorder (see article on Types of Depression.) Other than CBT, it is one of the most widely used therapeutic approaches to treating all forms of depression – with certain modifications for the type and severity of depression.

For a more extensive discussion of IPT, see Interpersonal Therapy for Depression.

Medications for depression

Many in our society decry the overuse of medications to try and “fix” illnesses and disease. They believe that our society has turned to pills instead of working on problems or trying to actively find behavioral solutions to stressful events. And while there always is abuse when it comes to prescription medications, the fact remains that doctors and researchers believe depression to be a neurochemical imbalance within the brain – controlled better with medication.

Certain brain neurotransmitters, or naturally occurring brain chemicals are, for some reason, malfunctioning within the brain’s circuitry with mood disorders. Neurotransmitters or brain chemicals commonly associated with depressive illnesses are serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine - all messengers responsible for sending messages from neurons to other cells.

In some cases concerning depression, researchers have found that individuals lack the right amount of these neurotransmitters. In other cases, the anatomy controlling how the brain’s neurons send and receive information could be the exacerbating factor.

Researchers continue to study why these malfunctions occur, but as they study both the anatomical and chemical reasons for chemical imbalances, many individuals – especially those with severe depression – are dramatically helped by taking an antidepressant or other mood enhancing drug. Without these medications, researchers believe that the suicide rate would go up precipitously.

Usually the combination of an antidepressant accompanied by psychotherapy is the best intervention for depression and other mood disorders. To read more about how these drugs work, see Medications and Depression.

Electricity, magnets, and other forms of brain stimulation

Scientists still don’t completely understand how stimulating the brain with electricity or magnets actually helps depression, but after years of research and specific interventions, they do know that it does help some individuals. Specifically, individuals who have tried many different medications and psychotherapies but failed to find any relief from severe depression are possible candidates for a brain stimulation treatment.

Most of the treatments that stimulate the prefrontal cortex – the area linked to depression – are more invasive than other types of interventions. However, the reduction of side effects over the years from these practices makes them safer than in years past.

Electroconvulsive therapy or shock therapy, the oldest and most controversial practice that once had harmful effects out-weighing its benefits, is now considered necessary to prevent a rise in suicides linked to severe depression.

Additionally, more knowledge and research about the chemical and electrical nature of the brain’s neuronal circuits has advanced research into emerging forms of brain-stimulation procedures, such as using electromagnetic energy.

For more information on today’s most common brain stimulation practices, see Electroconvulsive Therapy and Other Brain Stimulation Treatments for Depression.