In the U.S., one in three adults suffers from depression. Depression worsens the quality of life, adversely affect relationships with friends, colleagues, reduces the effectiveness of rights at work. It should be noted that if the prior for help to a doctor, a counselor asked predominantly intellectual and economic elite of society, aware of the importance of full active life, in recent years has increased the number of people of all walks of life, preferring to use the professional psychological help.
How to understand that you or your loved ones is not just a bad mood, and depression, in which you want to seek the assistance of a physician-therapist?
Any depression is composed of three components - mood disorders, autonomic disturbances and fatigue.
The first component of depression is related to changes in mood - sad gloom lasts more than two weeks. When depression appears dim perception of the world, everything seems gray and uninteresting. There are changes in mood during the day - morning, the mood may be good, but worse in the evening. Alternatively, the mood is bad in the morning, and several razveivaetsya in the evening. Some people may not be the daily fluctuations of mood - but it is sad, sad, dismal and wet.
Gloom is in different shades. Sometimes it's gloom with a touch of longing, with a tinge of anxiety, with a tinge of desperation, as well as indifference or irritability. Sometimes people may not realize its a sad mood, but feel the so-called physical manifestations of depression. With depression, you may receive a strong feeling the heat in the chest, «heavy stone pressing on the heart». Less depression manifests itself as a chronic feeling of pain in any part of the body, while physicians of other specialties are not to organic causes of pain.
Very often the situation long-term stress man reacts with a touch of anxiety depression. Anxiety people feel in different ways. It can manifest itself in the fear of falling asleep, nightmare dreams, and in constant fear and imagination that with friends and family, something terrible will happen. Sometimes people describe anxiety as anxiety and inability to usidet in one place. Constant feeling of anxiety does not allow you to relax, for example, a person can not sit quietly on a chair for more than two or three minutes - «fidget in his chair, then jumps and starts to walk around the room».
Very severe anxiety (57 points on the scale of Shihan or more) occurs on a background of depression developed, and manifests itself in the form of panic attacks (feeling the shortage of air, heart rate, trembling in the body, feeling the heat). If you are having severe anxiety, it is said that a person has formed a huge underwater part of the iceberg of depression and anxiety disorder is the pinnacle of the iceberg of depression.
If the alarming depression people could not usidet on the ground, then when the other forms of depression, he, on the contrary, it becomes harder to move. If a person sleeps for 12 -14 hours a day, he had no sense of cheerfulness in the mornings, but everyday activities - cooking the soup, clean the apartment using a vacuum cleaner - it seems to be prohibitive, or meaningless, it may be a manifestation of apaticheskoy depression.
The processes of inhibition in the depression, covering the entire body - the person becomes more difficult to think he had a significant negative impact on memory and attention, which significantly affects the efficiency. Difficulty with concentration is that people get tired of watching TV, or short of reading a few pages of interesting books. Or, for example, a person may be a long sit in front of the computer, but unable to concentrate at work.
The second component of depression include vegetative disorders (of vegetovascular vascular dystonia). If a cardiologist and internist excluded relevant organic disease, then hurried urination, the urge false, headaches, dizziness, fluctuation of blood pressure and temperature are treated as additional vegetative signs of depression.
In the gastrointestinal tract depression affects as follows: a person has lost appetite, constipation observed in 4-5 days. Considerably less, in the form of atypical depression, a man noted an increased appetite, diarrhea or false urge.
Depression is not true, and sexual systems. As a result of developing depression in men and women caught in sexual feelings. Much less depression manifests itself in the form of obsessive masturbation, or in the form of flight in many chaotic communication. Men often appear problems with potency. Women with depression may be a delay of regular menses in 10 - 14 days to six months or more.
The third component of depression - asthenic include fatigue, sensitivity to weather changes, irritability. Irritation causes loud sounds, bright lights and sudden touching strangers (for example, when a person accidentally pushed on the subway or on the street). Sometimes, after the outbreak of internal irritations appear tears.
When there are various depression disorders of sleep: difficulty in filling up, superficial restless sleep with frequent awakening or early awakening with a simultaneous desire and inability to sleep.
Depression has its own laws of development. There are signs that indicate the severity of depression. Symptom of depression were significantly greater reflection on the senselessness of life and even suicide. Thus, the general sense of reluctance to live, thinking about the senselessness and aimlessness of life, as well as more distinct suicidal thoughts, intentions or plans appear consistent with severe depression. The appearance of these symptoms you or your loved ones is an indication for urgent treatment to a doctor, a counselor. In this state, it is important to as quickly as possible to begin drug treatment of depression in an adequate dose.
Drug treatment of depression is appointed, if the level of depression on a scale Dung equals or exceeds 48 points. The effect is due to the influence of drugs on the serotonin system (hormone of happiness and pleasure), norepinephrine, etc. Against the background of a stable mood is much easier to resolve psychological problems, to allow the conflict situation.
Many people are afraid to take antidepressants, because believe that the alleged resistance to the growing habit (drug dependence). But it does not, to antidepressants addictive (dependence on drugs) does not develop. The addiction causes strong sedatives and sleeping pills from the group of tranquilizers (benzodiazepines). Depression is treated with a drug - with antidepressants.
Depending on the hue gloom physician psychotherapist appoints different antidepressants. There are antidepressants that treat depression, with a touch of anxiety. There are medications to treat depression, with a touch of apathy, indifference, etc. If you choose the right dose of medication within three to four weeks, the depression begins to undergo reverse development - disappear suicidal thoughts, anxiety, a desire to act in stabilizing mood.
Antidepressants become effective at the end of the second - the third week. Having improved, most people already at the fourth week, dropping out of receiving antidepressant, and as a consequence, in a few weeks, the depression returned. To completely cure the depression, it is important to bear the entire course of treatment of depression, a doctor, a psychotherapist.
The duration of treatment with antidepressants doctor determines an individual psychotherapist in each particular case. But as a rule, treatment with antidepressants may take from 4 months to a year, sometimes longer. Sometimes the doctor-psychotherapist after the main course of treatment may designate a course maintenance, to secure the effect of treatment of depression. Easiest to treat depression lasting less than six months. If a person defers treatment for two or three years, or even eight - ten years, the treatment significantly increases and can reach up to half a year and a half years of maintenance therapy.
Psychotherapy of depression should be treated as a high temperature in the practice of common diseases. The high temperature is not a diagnosis, it shows corporal trouble. When a person has fever, he is drawn to the doctor and specialist deals - this flu, appendicitis or something else. Thus depression and said that, at heart a bad man, and he needed psychiatric help. The doctor-psychotherapist appoints «febrifuge» - antidepressant, and further using the methods of psychotherapy helps a person deal with the problem, which was the cause of depression.
