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About Depression
Everyone has periods in their life when they feel down. Depression however, is more than just feeling sad and blue. It is a condition that causes interference in one’s life on a daily basis and can consist of one or more of the following symptoms:
ü Depressed mood
ü Diminished interest in pleasurable activities or hobbies
ü Weight loss or weight gain
ü Difficulty sleeping or sleeping too much
ü Agitation or irritability
ü Fatigue or loss of energy
ü Difficulty focusing and concentrating
ü Thoughts of suicide
ü Hopelessness
At its worst, depression can interfere with feelings of peace and happiness. It can become so disabling that one can become paralyzed, unable to engage in relationships, pursue educational or vocational endeavors, or achieve dreams.
Here are some statistics on depression:
- Each year, 9.5 percent of the population, or about 20.9 million American adults, will struggle with depression.
- Depression is currently the fourth most disabling illness worldwide, and, according to the World Health Organization, it will be the second leading cause of disability by the year 2020.
- About 10 percent of men and up to 25 percent of women will experience depression in their lifetime.
- Depression is responsible for up to 70 percent of psychiatric hospitalizations and about 40 percent of suicides.
- The cost of depression in the United States in the year 2000 was estimated to be $83 billion, including both $26 billion in costs of treatment and $57 billion in losses such as absenteeism, reduced productivity at work, and the value of lifetime earnings lost due to suicide-related deaths.
- Pre-schoolers are the fastest-growing market for antidepressants. At least four percent of preschoolers, over a million, are clinically depressed.
- The rate of increase of depression among children is an astounding 23%.
Depression often accompanies symptoms of anxiety and can result in a clinical anxiety syndrome. Likewise, anxiety disorders can cause and result in symptoms of clinical depression.
Depression can look different in children and adolescents. If they have difficulty expressing themselves, symptoms can result in irritability, acting out, and avoidance of school activities and friends.
Causes of depression may include:
- Genetic factors
- Environmental factors
- Cognitions: Negative thinking patterns
- Situational stress
- A combination of genetics and environment
Often times, people who have depression will not seek help due to fear of stigma. Here are a few key points to keep in mind:
- Don’t let your fear of what other’s think about you prevent you from getting treatment.
- If you suffer from depression you are not “crazy.” Likewise, if you seek help from a psychiatrist, you are not “crazy.” This has been a term that has been inappropriately used and applied, much from society’s lack of understanding of what depression is and looks like.
- One of the best things you can do for yourself is to get treatment. Remember, depression is treatable!
The Family in The Treatment Process
- It is important that family members get educated as to how they can support their loved one in their treatment of depression.
- Family members often times don’t realize that in their attempt to support their loved ones, they may be invalidating them. For example, if someone has a difficult time getting out of bed they might say, “Just get out of bed. I do it every morning.” Or, “Just quit being depressed and be happy.” For those suffering from depression, this can feel incredibly frustrating. Remember, there is no benefit in being depressed and they are not choosing to feel this way!
- It is important to get educated about the causes of depression.
What Does Treatment Look Like?
- Therapy is a key factor in treating depression and anxiety. More specifically, research supports that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy techniques tend to produce the highest positive treatment outcome.
- Medications in combination with therapy can prove to be helpful also.
For more on Cognitive Behavior Therapy, go to our Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Exposure and Ritual Prevention Techniques page.
About Anxiety
It is estimated that anxiety disorders affect more than 17 million Americans. These conditions, which are considered to be serious medical illnesses, require specialized treatment services. Extensive research in the past several years confirms that there are effective treatments that help decrease and even eliminate anxiety that previously may have been disabling.
Anxiety is the result of fear. When we are afraid, our body responds by producing physiological symptoms such as heart palpitations, sweating, trembling or shaking, shortness of breath, dizziness, and chest pain or discomfort. These symptoms tend to produce a “fight or flight response” which causes us to take action so that we can be “safe.” Typically ones instinct is to go into a “flight” response, rather than stay and “fight” what is scaring us. Hence, we often times see individuals whose lives have become significantly limited due to avoidance of the situations that are producing the anxiety.
According to the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV), there are 11 forms of Anxiety Disorders. While these disorders may vary in terms of etiology, they share several similar characteristics. For instance, these disorders can cause both physiological and psychological distress. Without treatment often times symptoms will become worse, impairing one’s social, occupational, vocational, and other key areas in one’s life.
About OCD
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is diagnosed when an individual has intrusive thoughts, images, or impulses (obsessions) that they find distressing, uncomfortable, and often times, intolerable. In an attempt to neutralize, or make these obsessions go away, behaviors are created (compulsions). Unfortunately, the compulsions, while providing temporary relief, do nothing to make the obsession, which is typically based in fear, go away. The compulsion actually acts to reinforce the condition of OCD, and what begins to emerge is patterned behaviors that can eventually run, even devastate, one’s life. As such, a formal diagnosis is made only when the symptoms are interfering or impacting one’s daily activities, social or interpersonal relationships, and/or educational/vocational endeavors. This is an important note, as many people can have symptoms of OCD, yet not have a diagnosis of OCD.
OCD can take on a variety of forms, including those most frequently spotlighted in the mainstream media: checking and washing. We, however, feel it’s important to stress that there is no typical way in which OCD manifests itself. It has many faces and disguises and can surface in ways that many would not believe. For instance, imagine waking up in the middle of the night and suddenly having the fear that you might stab your spouse. Most can expect that thought would be terrifying. Let’s think about the person that’s afraid that if he doesn’t "confess" every sin to God, or his "higher power," that he will be damned to eternal hell. How about the person that fears if she doesn’t walk through the same door she entered that someone she loves will die? These are just some of the examples of what OCD can look like.
Here are some other ways in which OCD can manifest:
- Fear of becoming a child molester.
- Fear of throwing up/getting sick/having a medical illness.
- Fear of going crazy.
- Fear of homosexuality/being gay.
- Fear of not doing a particular act and something “bad” happening.
- Fear of acting out in a sexually inappropriate manner.
- Fear of becoming a drug addict.
- Fear of pregnancy.
- Fear of urine/feces.
- Fear of AIDS/HIV Infection/Herpes.
- Fear of Blood.
- Fear of not sleeping (often times leading to a fear of going crazy).
- Fear of not doing things perfectly.
What’s important to remember--and this is key--most people have intrusive thoughts that bother them. In fact, it is considered to be quite rare, if not highly improbable, for people not to experience some form of intrusive thoughts in their lives. In this context, the thought is in one’s awareness, but it tends to disappear just as quickly as it entered. There is no feeling attached to the thought. It is, in essence, harmless. What makes OCD sufferers different is that they question their thoughts, and begin to "doubt" whether what they fear might actually come true. Consequently the fear, which is now in experienced as being in the realm of possibility, needs to be extinguished, which in OCD, is channeled through compulsions. Unfortunately, because the feared consequences are irrational, illogical, and improbable, the compulsions do nothing to reduce the fear. So, because OCD is rooted in a physiologically-based chemical imbalance, the fear remains, and the more compulsions one does, the more those compulsions actually feed the condition. Hence, the world of the OCD sufferer becomes increasingly limited, and ultimately controlled by compulsions.
We would like to note some important points.
- There is no case history of anyone with a diagnosis of OCD who has actually acted on a feared thought or impulse.
- OCD is only diagnosed when one recognizes his/her obsessions as being irrational and illogical. If one believes in the feared thoughts, then other diagnoses should be considered.
- There is no such thing as "Pure O," meaning obsessions without compulsions. When one is obsessing, one is actually compulsing.
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