AGING AND PERSONALITY: GETTING DEPRESSION TREATMENT
If you persistently have depression symptoms, have a physical checkup. Fatigue, problems in eating or concentrating, and weight loss are also signs of most diseases. Depression is a common accompaniment of hypothyroidism, Addison's disease, Cushing's disease, pernicious anemia, idiopathic Parkinsonism, uremia, congestive heart failure. It is associated with cancer of the pancreas, leukemia, and brain tumors; it is a side effect of a variety of drugs. Rule out any medical reason for your symptoms first.
Then ask your doctor to recommend a mental health professional - a licensed psychiatrist (M.D.), clinical psychologist (Ph.D.), or clinical social worker (M.S.W.).
Or visit your local community mental health center, which offers treatment on a sliding fee scale. Particularly at clinics where students are being trained, the quality of services can be top-notch, because people are learning the most up-to-date treatment techniques.
According to various community surveys, anywhere from 5 percent to 50 percent of older people suffer from depression. Gerald Klerman, professor of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and an authority on the subject, estimates that less than one-quarter of the older people who are depressed get any treatment at all. Cloudy thinking, fatigue, lethargy, problems in eating and sleeping - even chronic un-happiness - are too easily passed off as normal old age, particularly in a person whose worldview is gloom and doom. Many people think that if they seek out psychological help they must be crazy. Or they may realize they have an emotional problem yet not go for treatment because they (rightly) recoil at endlessly, expensively, and embarrassingly discussing what happened fifty years ago.
This is unfortunate. According to Klerman, "treatment of depressions and other affective disorders is often a gratifying experience for patients and their families. Because of the range of biological and psychological treatments that are available, patient response is generally good." Depending on the cause of your depression, medication alone may be effective, or you may need medication plus psychotherapy, or psychotherapy alone.
Psychotherapy is most effective for the type of depression that is triggered by an external - that is, situational - cause. You've never been the same since the death of your wife - since developing your disability, you feel apathetic and hopeless about life. Sometimes the reason people become depressed is genuinely physical - a defect in brain chemistry is producing symptoms that often seem to arise "out of the blue." For these "biological" depressions, drug therapy is the treatment of choice.
The newest form of psychotherapy for depression has much more in common with taking a course than with being on the couch. You are taught strategies to control your depressive thoughts and helped to take action. You and the therapist collaborate (more as teacher and student than as doctor and patient) to identify the "helpless and hopeless" ideas that are preventing you from getting pleasure from life and take concrete steps to change your life so you feel more fulfilled.
This treatment, called cognitive behavior therapy, is effective. Research presented by Stanford University psychologist Dolores Gallagher at the 1986 meeting of the American Psychological Association showed that a twenty-session treatment regimen totally cured or greatly improved about 70 percent of a group of depressed elderly patients. The effects were long lasting. Most remained symptom free or had only minor symptoms at a one-year follow-up.
If you have a mild case of learned helplessness, let's see how you might use a cognitive behavioral approach to find a more fulfilling life. (Unfortunately, people who are suffering from learned helplessness to any real extent are by definition incapable of helping themselves. They desperately need professional help to change their conviction that they are helpless and that their situation is hopeless.)
*48/159/5*
GENERAL HEALTH
- The expiry date is mentioned on each blister. It is different for different batches. The shelf life is 2 years from the date of manufacture and would differ from batch to batch depending on when they were manufactured.
- Read the product information leaflet provided with the product before using it.
Information that this website contains are general information only and are not intended as a replacement for advise and recommendations made by your medical practitioner. We do not make any warranty or represent the accuracy of information supplied herein. We reserve the right to omit portions, correct errors or withdraw an entire page on this website as we see fit without prior notice.
Information about a certain drug, its uses, recommended dosages and side effects do not serve as a substitute to a prescription or information relayed to you by a licensed medical practitioner. These materials are just a general overview about the product. Likewise, we do not endorse use of any drug found on this site.
Use of this site is at your sole risk. We disclaim responsibility for reliance you place upon the information that we posted on this site. Always seek medical advice from a professional healthcare and discuss thoroughly your intention of using any of the medicine that is offered in this website.
|
