Archive for the mental health Category

Helping Your Helpers

Posted in depression, mental health, recovery with tags , , , , , , , on July 2, 2024 by Norman Reid

It’s undeniable that modern medications to treat depression have brought relief to millions.  But medication alone is likely to produce only symptomatic relief, without addressing the underlying causes of depression or its impact on our lives.  Relying on medication alone may leave you dependent on it over the long term without leading to full recovery.  It’s well-established that recovery from depression is best served by engaging in therapy as a part of the treatment program.  For that reason, therapy is an essential component of effective treatment for depression.

While you can and should rely on your therapist for help, there are many things that you, the patient, can do to enhance your chances for recovery.

A good therapist can guide a patient in steps that can yield good results.  But a therapist alone can only accomplish so much.  While you can and should rely on your therapist for help, there are many things that you, the patient, can do to enhance your chances for recovery. Some, in fact, are essential.  Here are some suggestions drawn from my own recovery process.

  • Be willing to work—hard!  Expect to be an active participant in your own recovery.  Your therapist can’t do the work for you.
  • Read—about your condition, its causes and its therapy.  Be an informed consumer.
  • Don’t rely on medications alone.  They are only an aid; don’t let them become a crutch.
  • Expect to feel some pain as you go through recovery.  This is a necessary and valuable part of the process.  Understanding this, and being willing to face it, will help.
  • Be consistent in your recovery program.  Don’t switch therapists and treatment methodologies just because you are frustrated with the pace of progress.  Recovery can take time.
  • Be patient.  Most likely, your depression took a lifetime to build; you can’t expect to recover from it in a matter of weeks or even months.
  • Learn to express your feelings.  Writing in a journal helps.  Learn to write so that you pour out a free flow of thoughts, even if they don’t seem to make sense at the time.
  • Be open to small feelings.  The chances are that the feelings that are most hidden from sight are also the most important to uncover.  Given them a chance to surface.

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Some Facts About Depression

Posted in depression, mental health with tags , , , , , , on June 21, 2024 by Norman Reid

Depression as a disease is often hidden. Many of its sufferers hide it from friends and family because they fear being stigmatized as “weak” or given easy advice like “snap out of it” by unknowing others. But the fact is, depression is a widespread affliction that brings suffering and needless death to countless millions in the United States, from where I write, and worldwide.

Consider these facts. In 2021, the latest year for which data are available, it’s estimated that some 21 million adults in the U.S., or about 8.3 percent of all adults, had at least one depressive episode. Worldwide, the numbers are staggeringly similar; about 280 million people in the world have depression, about five percent of all adults.

In both the U.S. and around the globe, rates of depression are roughly 50 percent higher among women than men. Depression is especially prevalent among young adults, those aged 18-25; in the U.S., the rate of depression in this age group amounted to nearly 19 percent, or about one in five young persons.

The costs of depression due to lost work time, not to mention the pain sufferers must endure, is incalculable. What’s well-known, however, is the extent to which depression leads many of its sufferers to escape their pain and feelings of hopelessness through suicide. In the U.S., suicide claimed over 48,000 lives in 2021, making it the eleventh leading cause of death overall and the second leading cause of death among those aged 10-14 and 25-34. There were twice as many deaths from suicide as from homicide.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over 700,000 people die from suicide each year, with the highest rates among those aged 15-29, where its’ the fourth leading cause of death.

Depression is treatable, however, and both medication and therapy can offer relief to many depressed persons. However, both cost and availability of treatment often prevent access and the WHO estimates that more than 75 percent of people in low- and middle-income countries receive no treatment at all.

Expanding investments in mental health care, training more health care providers in the field of mental health, and taking steps to reduce social stigma associated with mental disorders are all needed to address this global scourge.

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