Symptoms of Depression
Depression symptoms may be divided into three categories. The three categories are psychological, physical and social symptoms. All the three categories affect a person negatively and lead to low productivity. Depression symptoms are generally noticeable as they are mostly a deviation from the normal behaviour of a person. Workmates therefore are in a good position to easily notice the manifestation of depression in one of their workmates.
Psychological symptoms: These symptoms affect one psychologically and therefore change the emotions of a person from what they are in a normal circumstance.
Physical symptoms: Depression affects the physical abilities of the person affected. Social symptoms: Depression also affects the social wellbeing of a person.
Explanation
As noted above, the three categories of symptoms are general deviation from a behaviour considered normal in any person. This makes it easy for depression to be easily detected.
In a workplace setting, close workmates can easily identify when one of them is under depression. This is especially easy as the depressed person will not behave normally. It will be relatively easy to note that a given workmate is under some form of pressure. However, this may be hard to identify if the office setting is not open but rather closed and if the official functions do not allow close interactions.
Treatment of Depression
Depression can be of various forms, for instance, Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and Dysthymic Disorder (DD) (Thomas & Hersen, 2009). The choice of treatment will depend on the type of depression being treated. Depression treatments are of various types though medications are more regular: physical treatments (Medication, ECT and TMS), psychological treatment, and self-help & alternative therapies (Thomas & Hersen, 2009).
It is necessary that a treatment option be chosen carefully to enhance its effectiveness. For instance, it has been shown that depressions with biological origins are best treated using physical treatments. The other types of depressions with no biological origins are well treated through psychological interventions (Thomas & Hersen, 2009).
Explanation
Physical treatments are of three categories: medication, electroconvulsive therapy and transcranial magnetic stimulation.
Common medication groups for depression are antidepressants (different antidepressants work effectively on different types of depression), antipsychotics (mainly used for treating psychotic depression and in rare occasions they are also for treating melancholic depression), mood stabilisers (used for treating bipolar disorders), and augmenting agents (used alongside antidepressant in the case of melancholic depression and the antidepressants used do not provide enough benefit).
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is used in treating psychotic depression, severe mania, severe post-natal depression and severe melancholic depression. Severe melancholic is characterised with a high risk of committing suicide (Black Dog Institute, 2012).
Psychological treatments are of various types: mindfulness therapy, cognitive behaviour therapy, interpersonal therapy, psychotherapies, counselling, and narrative therapy. Psychological treatments are said to be very effective in treating non-melancholic depression (Black Dog Institute, 2012)..
Mindfulness is a form of Buddhist meditation used in regulating the mood of a person and helps a person to avoid denial by helping him or her to accept the present state of things.
Cognitive behaviour therapy helps a person in understanding how negative thinking habits negatively affect his or her moods and how to avoid such negative thinking patterns:
- Interpersonal therapy – this aims at changing the interpersonal behaviour of a person. This is done by helping him or her to adapt to current interpersonal roles and situations.
- Psychotherapies – this is a long-term treatment that can take up to years.
- Narrative therapy – the therapist in this situation helps the patient to narrate stories about his or her live and uses the same stories to show the patient how limiting they are (Black Dog Institute, 2012).
Self-help Strategies
Self-help measures are of a wide range. Self-help measures in conjunction with other alternate therapies can be used in treating some types of depression, in some alone while in some cases in conjunction with other treatments such as antidepressants or psychological treatments (Black Dog Institute, 2012).
Self-help measures are not effective in treating biological types of depression which include melancholic, psychotic and bipolar depression. In such situations, self-help measures can only be used to supplement physical treatments.
The self-help measures and alternate therapies are mostly personal measures and therefore for them to work effectively they require commitment to execute. Lack of commitment will lead to inconsistence in their execution and this may affect their effectiveness (Black Dog Institute, 2012).
Intervention Strategies
Intervention strategies are very vital as they can save lives. Intervention strategies can be used after a person realises that he or she is depressed. They can also be used by work mates after realising that one of theirs is not well. Different strategies can be used depending on the level of depression that a person is under (CENPATICO, 2012).
Depression intervention strategies are vital as they can prevent depression from developing to advanced stages.
- These strategies require one to be disciplined in order for them to work.
- In most cases the strategies are don’ts and does that one needs to know.
These are some of the measures which need to be practiced in order to avoid development of depression. They are simple means of staying healthy psychologically and adapting to stressful environment. They are just simple don’ts and do is which a person can easily follow with much supervision. However, just like the self-help measure and alternative therapies, they also require discipline and commitment. These strategies equip you with some strategies of fighting depression and points out to things one needs to be aware of and others that need to be avoided. These strategies well used are effective in keeping depression out.
References
Black Dog Institute. (2012). Treatments for depression. Black Dog Institute. Web.
CENPATICO. (n.d.). Major Depression Best-Practice Intervention Strategies. CENPATICO. Web.
NHS. (2012). Symptoms of depression. National Health Service. Web.
Thomas, J & Hersen, M. (2002). Handbook of Mental Health in the Workplace. New York, NY: Sage.