2809NRS Mental Health Nursing Practice

You have been invited to contribute an article to a professional newsletter on “current understanding and treatment options for depression”. The audience are tertiary educated people, but not mental health clinicians, who find that they come across people who are depressed and aren’t sure what they should do to understand the problem and to recommend possible interventions. They find that when they talk to people who seem depressed that many people aren’t keen on professional help as they say that nothing is likely to help. 

In the modern stressful environment, different mood disorders are common leading to a major issue in behavioral patterns of individuals. Depression is a disorder which is tough to diagnose as it has no physical symptoms apart from a few behavioral changes (Segal, Williams and Teasdale 2018). Therefore it is normally assumed that a person suffers from depression if they lose interest in their daily life and routine for two weeks having constant spells of sadness. Though it has no physical signs, the effects of depression on the lifestyle has its effects on the body. It is the loss of appetite, changed sleeping patterns lead to physical aftereffects on the patient. Various methods have been devised to treat the issue as it is becoming a rising problem in today’s society. To treat depression a number of cognitive and behavioral therapies are used apart from medication.

The therapeutic techniques used in treatment of depression takes into account finding the causal reasons of the depression among the various patients. The kinds of interventions used in the treatment of depression are mainly psychological in nature. The intervention methods in cases of depression are based on number of behavioral therapies. The therapies that can be considered for the treatment of depression are Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), Interpersonal therapy (IPT) and Psychodynamic therapy. The medical treatment of depression takes into account numerous hormone inhibiting medications. Medicines such as serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors help in the treatment of depression.

Other than the traditional treatments of depression there are a number of alternative therapies which are used to treat depression. The techniques used in the alternative treatments include Electro Convulsive Therapy, Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) and Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS). These therapies take into account alternative techniques focusing on treatment of the disorders by electrical and magnetic pulses to treat the disorders. The alternative treatment options of depression focus on the various techniques that may help in treating the disease by affecting the regions affected by depression.

The treatment of depression have been highly criticized for various side-effects they have on human health. The increase in the depression symptoms among individuals in the society is the result of the long term hectic schedules and lifestyle that the people currently follow. The improvement in mood disorders is dependent on the various sociological implications of lifestyle in the present society. Depressive symptoms among people in the society is the result of hard work and extreme exposure to the extreme hectic schedules lead to a fallacy in the minds of the people regarding their well-being. The causes of depression among the patients can only be ascertained by understanding behavioral patterns among individuals. Causes of depression among the majority of people in the society are emotional stress they undergo.

The behavior therapies like CBT, IPT and Psychodynamic approaches of treatment of depression takes into account behavioral changes among the individuals to alleviate the depressive symptoms. The behavioral patterns of the individuals is result of a number of triggers that initiate depression. The alleviation of triggers is one of the best ways in the cure of depression. The behavior therapies work on triggers of depression among individuals in the society. The triggers of depression may lie in a number of reasons ranging from personal ambitions to social stress factors among individuals.  The behavioral therapies work on triggers of these stresses and when done in controlled environment help people to remove the causal actions and make it a pleasant experience (Gilbody et al. 2015). The depressive symptoms among individuals is affected by mood disorders show extreme behavioral changes. The mood swings and disorders among individuals treated by behavior therapies are unlikely to recur and person learns to control them. There are however no physical side-effects of the behavior therapies other than dependence on the therapy to treat the issue. The behavior based therapies are by far most effective way of improving mood related disorders in the patients of depression.

The medication which is prescribed to the patients of depression include drugs like Zoloft and Prozac which work on serotonin reuptake. The hormonal discrepancies found in the body is one of the leading causes of depression. The medication helps in alleviating the symptoms along with helping in hormonal control and mood swings. These medications help in the improvement of health of the individuals (Berry-Bibee et al. 2016). The people who suffer from mood related disorders are highly likely to become dependent on these drugs and they may result in withdrawal symptoms in the absence of the drugs. The treatment of depression using reuptake inhibitor are quickest way to address the problem but their long use have shown to have addictive and lead to reduction in their effectiveness. The complexity of the use of these kind of drugs help in curing depression but have their own drawbacks. The numerous side-effects include sleeping disorders, weight gain, mood swings and effect on sexual health

Apart from the usual medicinal drugs and behavior based interventions, there are a number of electrical and magnetic therapies which help in improving the condition of the patient who has depression. Therapies like ECT, rTMS and VNS focus on the stimulation of a certain part of the brain using the electric or the magnetic waves (Sharma et al. 2018). While the others focus on giving electric or magnetic pulses to the brain externally, external electrodes are placed in the brain for VNS. The side effect of these therapies include mood disorders, unwanted mood changes and sleeping trouble. VNS however may make things worse by leading to infections in the brain and hemorrhages.

Therefore it can be seen that depression is one of the rising problems in society due to changing lifestyles and the induced stress on the people. There are number of therapeutic interventions for the treatment of the diseases among patients. The treatment focusses on improving the lifestyle changes to make them revert to their original self. In this contention, it is seen that behavior therapies work best. The medications have to be taken under extreme circumstances and the electromagnetic therapies are still under research for their effectiveness.

References

Berry-Bibee, E.N., Kim, M.J., Simmons, K.B., Tepper, N.K., Riley, H.E., Pagano, H.P. and Curtis, K.M., 2016. Drug interactions between hormonal contraceptives and psychotropic drugs: a systematic review. Contraception, 94(6), pp.650-667.

Gilbody, S., Littlewood, E., Hewitt, C., Brierley, G., Tharmanathan, P., Araya, R., Barkham, M., Bower, P., Cooper, C., Gask, L. and Kessler, D., 2015. Computerised cognitive behaviour therapy (cCBT) as treatment for depression in primary care (REEACT trial): large scale pragmatic randomised controlled trial. Bmj, 351, p.h5627.

Segal, Z.V., Williams, M. and Teasdale, J.D., 2018. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression. Guilford Publications.

Sharma, M.S., Ang-Rabanes, M., Selek, S., Gajwani, P. and Soares, J.C., 2018. Neuromodulatory options for treatment-resistant depression: Evidence is strongest for ECT and rTMS, but other modalities show promise. Current Psychiatry, 17(3), pp.26-34.