Depression can be isolating, exhausting, frustrating, and anxiety-provoking. It can impact one’s ability to actively live life, making people feel like they “can’t” or “shouldn’t” do things they normally enjoy.
Roughly 280 million people globally live with depression, based on a 2021 report from the World Health Organization. In the U.S., nearly 21 million people have experienced a major depressive episode, which entails experiencing depressive symptoms for a minimum of two weeks in a row that impair one’s ability to function. This data reinforces the fact that depression doesn’t discriminate based on race, ethnicity, gender, orientation, or age. However, living with it can make someone feel as if they are the only one depression has targeted. Depression is isolating, and the stigma placed on mental health by some cultures and society in general makes it even more difficult to ask for help.
Depression Skews Perspective
Depression skews people’s thoughts, which can become another barrier to seeking help and lead them to question whether they’re worthy of support. Depression can be very convincing, causing a person to believe what they’re thinking to be fact. And as thoughts like “no one cares about me” run rampant, the ability to fight them weakens. These thoughts can cause a decline in energy and lead to an inability or lack of desire to take care of basic human needs (sleep, hygiene, nutrition) and affect concentration, self-esteem, and relationships.
Sometimes, depression comes with a companion issue, such as anxiety, addiction, or an eating disorder. Multiple symptoms and issues can cause a person to feel trapped in a never-ending cycle of hopelessness, or for some, that they no longer want to live. The weight of it can feel like too much to bear.
Hope through Therapeutic Tools
If you feel alone in your struggle, you’re not. With the insights and tools afforded by therapy, and a greater focus on improving behavior, relationships, and self-care, it’s possible to have a better journey and relationship with depression.
One of the most helpful therapies to address depression is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which focuses on building understanding of how thoughts, feelings, and behavior feed off of one another. It identifies and challenges cognitive distortions (unhelpful thought patterns), such as catastrophizing, expecting the worst possible outcome from a situation, or black and white thinking, seeing things in extremes, without considering any middle ground. Challenging these patterns helps people improve how they see themselves and the world around them, and how they act and interact.
CBT is effective for treating depression. Other forms of therapy can help with understanding and management of symptoms, actions, and feelings too. Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) focuses on helping people gain awareness of their emotions and develop skills of distress tolerance (like paced breathing and exercise) and emotional regulation, such as practicing mindfulness and being kind and patient with oneself.
Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), can help people understand that their thoughts are just thoughts, not facts, and help them navigate who they are and how their values, especially shifts in values, can impact their outlook on life.
Help Is Available When You’re Ready
If depression is keeping you from living the life you want or doing the things you need to do, the first step is asking for help. This can be difficult, but it can be done.
If you are in our service area, Foresight is ready and willing to help! Our team will listen and work to connect you with a therapist who will listen, normalize your concerns, help you make a plan, and provide you with tools and skills to better understand and manage depression. Our psychiatry team, in collaboration with or independent of therapy, can support those needing medication management. And our nutrition team can work with people interested in exploring the brain-gut connection to depression.
In the Berkeley, CA area, our Intensive Treatment Services might be an option for those requiring a higher level of care.
If you are unsure about reaching out for help, a great place to start is with your primary care doctor/physician (PCP). Your PCP has tools to help with depression screening where mood, sleep, appetite, and stress levels can be assessed, and a discussion around mental health resources can be initiated.