SCHOOL ASSIGNMENT on depression: please help me!

**Emma1993** · 10-27-2010 02:51 AM

hi everyone!

so for starters, i am new to all this, and have never used an online forum before... but i am in year 11 and am currently doing a school assignment on depression and its treatments. i need to find information using all different sources, and i thought a forum might be a great place to find information straight from real people who have been through this first hand.

if you have a few minutes free, i would so greatly appreciate some help from you! the assignment more directly focuses on the treatments that are available for depression, and which one if any is the most effective. i myself have in fact suffered from depression, so i am aware that treatments are an individual thing...

perhaps maybe you could just write a quick paragraph or so explaining anything at all about your depression that you feel comfortable sharing - causes, symptoms, diagnosis, etc. - and maybe also could you please tell me about the treatments you recieved, and which were most effective?

thankyou so much for your time! i so greatly appreciate it

**CHANDLERS WISH** · 10-27-2010 03:07 AM

Welcome to the Forum...

I find it "wrong" forgive me

That your assignment is based on what the most effective "treatment is", if you are talking about drugs? If your talking about, councelling, physcologists, drugs and therefore, which one, then that's different

Wish you well in your assignment...

Depression, has many points to note to diagnose, maybe it would be good if you were able to pinpoint those, may give you extra points...

CW

**Emma1993** · 10-27-2010 03:45 AM

thanks for replying! so i suppose perhaps i should try and write it better.. sorry!

what i mean is that i am aware there is no best treatment. what i was more looking for was information about any types of treatments that anyone has had (incl. counselling, medication, etc) and i was wondering which ones had worked for you..

for example, maybe someone had depression and treated it using a few methods - maybe medication and counselling. i would like to know if these worked for you, maybe the counselling worked better, or the medication perhaps.

basically any information or feedback regarding treatments you have had and what worked best?

**CHANDLERS WISH** · 10-27-2010 04:32 AM

Thanks for clarifying

I'm a positive person, way but the stress of my work, life, sometimes gets me down . I'm not alone, I know of other's the same..

We, tend to go alone. Tough people.. We just work towards, changing every single netative into a positive somehow and in that, we gradually get rid of the depressed thoughts...

So for me and others like me, it's affirmations, I CAN, approach, nothing is impossible, post it stickers and belief and in that, eventually things turn and as such, we/I lose feeling depressed...

I don't believe in medication, I believe the mind is powerful, some need help to make the mind "realise" and others can do it themselves, being tough and doing the post it sticker approach, and changing their mind pattern to I CAN...

That's my take on how I deal with it... and it works.

CW

**Emma1993** · 10-27-2010 05:43 AM

thankyou once again, that was helpful!

any other responses would be greatly appreciated as well

**ItsASecret** · 10-27-2010 09:11 AM

I am a huge believer in medication, mind you I have a major bias as a science student (almost every course I have taken in my entire degree touches on depression) so that explains my stance but the list is long for depression treatments. Sure a patient can get Prozac, Effexor, Lexapro, Paxil, Wellbutrin...and tons more but people often fear medicine because of the inescapable result of possible side effects. On that basis I do not blame people. It can go both ways with medication...see results in a few weeks or never at all. If you are doing research on writing a paragraph about this type of treatment look into SSRIs (selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors).

Treatment is certainly not limited to medication though. Not at all. A huge number of patients that enter a therapists or psychologists office these days are for depression (last I heard, and do not quote me, but it was upwards of 70% of patients). A big number so obviously they want to help people get better. If you are researching to write a paragraph about the therapy side of things look into a psychological phenomenon called learned helplessness. This is thought to account for depression in patients. What this suggests is that people learn to literally 'give up' when they realize nothing they do can help their situation. Example, a student does not enjoy science because of all the memorizing and it is just too confusing. So they try anyway and spend all this time studying and studying only to get their exam back saying nope you failed. So they study again really really hard for the next exam to make up for it, but nope they failed again. They learn that no matter what they do, even studying for countless hours, did not help their situation so why bother to keep studying? They learn to be helpless, they learn that the situation is out of their control. They give up and become depressed.

Psychologists and therapists will then come in and try out different techniques. One is called confidence building which is just as the name implies you tell a patient they "can not fail" and give them tasks you know they can do to make them feel better about themselves and realize that they can do things. From there it is just a gradual buildup of things. Then there is just general self esteem building, which means telling people you are beautiful you are smart etc. That may not work as well because the depressed people are not easily convinced. There is sit in a chair and talk about feelings for hours and hours. That can work if you can get a person to open up enough to explore their feelings and why they feel the way they do. Depression is a big big field right now so looking into treatments is literally endless.

**Emma1993** · 10-27-2010 03:17 PM

thanks so much

that was great help!

if anyone else has anything the same, or personal experience or anything, i would love to hear

thankyou!

**Lunar Keiki** · 10-28-2010 02:27 AM

I was treated for a bout of situational depression. I was given Paxil which I took for a few months maybe, but as the doctor said, the medication doesn't make the sadness or depression go away--it just takes the edge off it. She said instead of experiencing the typical highs and lows of emotions, you tend to travel down the middle. I did notice that a bit, and I noticed that the initial period where I was so so sad and grieving--I was able to function in my daily life with some amount of normalcy. As time passed and the initial shock, confusion and misery dulled a bit, I was able to wean off the medication and deal with things better. When something happens suddenly, you are bombarded with so many different feelings, that it is often very difficult to handle it all. All I wanted to do was crawl in a hole and die. Once I started on the Paxil, I felt it helped with my coping skills and I was able to step back a little, maybe step outside of myself and address my feelings and emotions better. After a few weeks--maybe a month or two, I can't really remember--I recall deciding that I was strong enough to go it without the meds, so I weaned off and stopped going to my doctor as well. I have never been back on it since, and that has been 9 years.