Depression

What is depression?

Depression is a mental health condition in which your mood is low most or all of the time, making you feel miserable, hopeless, and despairing.

While it’s perfectly normal to feel down and sad sometimes, especially when you’re coping with difficult problems in your life, these feelings should improve with time. Or you may have days where you feel blue about nothing in particular, which is also normal.

When you have depression, these negative feelings overwhelm you, and it becomes impossible to lift your mood. Depression isn’t an illness that you can diagnose with a blood test or imaging study, and each person’s experience of depression is unique to them. However, there are symptoms that cover the spectrum of depression.

What are the symptoms of depression?

Possible symptoms for depression include:

• Constant low mood
• Fatigue
• Difficulty concentrating
• Feeling worthless
• Memory problems
• Difficulties sleeping
• Weight loss or gain

Depression also robs you of the pleasures you usually feel in your life; your hobbies and interests lose their appeal. If depression gets severe enough, you might start thinking about self-harm and suicide.

If you have five symptoms or more, and they affect you every day for more than a couple of weeks, that fulfills the criteria for a diagnosis of depression.

What causes depression?

The exact cause of depression isn’t clear. Imbalances in your brain chemistry can be responsible for the symptoms of depression, but these imbalances are often brought on by stressful life events, such as:

• Bereavement
• Abuse
• Divorce
• Moving house
• Chronic pain
• Other health problems
• Substance abuse
• Social isolation

You’re more likely to get depression if other family members experience it, so there’s probably a genetic link too.

How is depression treated?

Steven and the team at Worrier 2 Warrior take an eclectic approach to depression treatment. This means they draw from multiple disciplines within therapy to give you a comprehensive treatment that meets your individual needs.

Psychotherapy, or talk therapy, allows you to discuss your negative thoughts and emotions with a licensed mental health professional. The most common type of psychotherapy for treating depression is cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT).

CBT focuses on replacing unhelpful thoughts and feelings with more helpful coping mechanisms and problem-solving techniques. The goal of CBT sessions is to help you control your physical and emotional responses to negative thoughts, which can improve your overall quality of life.

Worrier 2 Warrior primarily offers teletherapy visits, but in-person sessions are available upon request. To learn more, call Worrier 2 Warrior or schedule an appointment online.