Good Morning Ava,
Everyone knows what it is like to feel “down” or “blue.” Everyone has experienced feelings of sadness, disappointment, loss, guilt and regret. These emotions are natural and healthy reactions to negative life events. In fact, these negative feelings usually help us cope with stress and solve problems. Often we can’t understand why we’re feeling bad. These feelings tell us that something is wrong and that there’s a problem that needs to be solved. Such feelings usually don’t last. People can usually experience these feelings, realize what’s wrong, cope with the problem, feel better, and then get on with their lives.
Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) often occurs following negative life events. However, unlike “sadness” or “disappointment” (normal reactions to negative life events) MDD is characterized by very strong negative feelings that last for a long time. Because these feelings are too strong and last for too long they do not help people solve problems. Instead, these strong negative feelings interfere with our ability to cope with problems.
People are very complex so there are probably a lot of different reasons that we become depressed. There are a lot of different theories about the causes of depression, depending on how you look at it.
How do we manage depression you ask? Here at The Depression Center we offer a interactive, 16-session cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) course. Each person has unique goals in their treatment. Whatever your motivation, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a very effective treatment for depression. You can use the tools whether or not you are taking medication, and whether or not you are currently seeing a therapist or mental health professional. The Depression Program has a number of tools and resources to help each individual overcome their depression and win.
We hope we have directed you in the right direction this morning. Please continue to visit us within our online support group at your own discrepancy.
Melanie
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The Depression Center Support Team
