How to Treat Depression
When talking about depression, we often say “It’s more than just sadness”, and this is absolutely true. Depression in fact has nine different dynamics or symptoms and you can find those here. Given that depression is multi-faceted, so must the treatments. We’ll discuss some of those in this article.
Professional help for depression usually includes some type of counseling and/or medication management. Oftentimes, a combination of the two has shown promise. When looking for medication management, you can often discuss this with your primary care physician. They sometimes prescribe medication but also might refer you to a specialist. If using insurance, you can always search for providers in your network, or contact your insurance company for a list of approved providers. If you don’t have insurance and/or don’t have a lot of money to spend, you can check out your local community mental health center that often offers these services.
As far as counseling goes, you can go about it in a similar way. If you are using insurance, search for a provider in the network and see what your out-of-pocket expenses might be as well as limitations on how many sessions insurance will cover. Check out these two podcast episodes with some practical information on how to pick a counselor here and here. Referrals and word of mouth are good ways to find a counselor, so ask around and see if any of your friends or family know of someone they’d recommend. I recommend finding someone with a license who specializes in depression (or any other concern you have). Learn more about what a specialty is here.
While counseling and medication are helpful, we don’t always have the time, energy, and finances to engage in those regularly. Here are some everyday things you can do that have been proven to improve depression:
-Get some sleep. Decreased sleep and depression have a harmful relationship with each other. While your depression might make it hard to sleep, you can always start to address your sleep hygiene to make changes. Even the smallest of changes is a step in the right direction.
-Get some exercise. Exercise has been proven to have similar effects on the brain as an antidepressant. Exercise doesn’t have to be a super intense weight lifting session, a half marathon, or spending money on a gym membership. Just getting your heart rate up can be a great start.
-Practice happiness. While it seems that happy people are “just happy”, happiness is often something that requires practice. Check out some science-backed practices here. I particularly like the Three Good Things exercise.
-Be nice to yourself. We often think that we can just be mean to ourselves and that’ll “teach us a lesson” and our depression will improve. Depression often gets exacerbated when others treat us poorly, so it doesn’t make sense to do the same to ourselves. Self-compassion can help as a replacement or buffer from things like worrying and rumination, which have been proven to not help depression.
-Do your homework. I often provide psychoeducation to clients in therapy as a way for them to better understand their depression. Centre for Clinical Interventions has a lot of great resources for mental health concerns like depression, anxiety, self-esteem, and a whole lot more.
Depression can make you feel like you’re the only one suffering through this, but you are not alone. After seeing a counselor for help with their depression, I usually hear the only regret is they didn’t do it sooner.