Depression Preventing Major Depression What

Depression

Preventing Major Depression

What do you believe the best approach to prevention and treatment of major depression? Explain the approach you believe would be most effective and justify your answer with supportive research and theory.

Major depression is a severe manifestation of a mood disorder where patients lose interest in most daily aspects of self-care, cannot find happiness in formerly pleasurable activities, and experience negative alterations in food, sleep, and daily activity patterns. However, quite often the sufferer exhibits milder forms of depression, such as dysthymia, several years before the onset of a major depressive episode. Prevention, as for so many illnesses, may also be the best cure for major depression.

Preventative strategies for those at risk of developing major depression, such as psychotherapy, have found to be profoundly helpful in those exhibiting sub-threshold depression. "Sub-threshold depression is important: it is much more prevalent than major depression; it commonly leads to psychosocial disability; and almost 20% of people with sub-threshold depression develop a major depressive episode within a year." (Willemse, 2004) Even minimal contact psychotherapy with at-risk patients exhibiting minor impairment in daily function due to depression has been found to significantly reduced the risk of major depression.

Of course, sometimes depression strikes without any known cause. But most of the time, there is some hereditary tendency towards manifesting the illness. Depression and depressive episodes do seem to run in families, and stressful life changes or events can trigger depression. While predicting depression is hardly an exact science, providing counseling, monitoring, and support for persons with a family history of the disorder, promoting self-awareness and self-monitoring of moods, and extending therapy to persons in difficult transition times are also important preventative strategies. ("Major Depression," 2006, Medline Plus Encyclopedia)

Encouraging healthy life patterns, like proper exercise, eating, and sleep amongst persons in at-risk groups for depression like adolescents, new mothers, and other people in life stage transitions is an additional preventative strategy. Even in persons with full-blown depression, such alterations of negative life patterns can be helpful. Although "depression can be treated in a variety of ways," either with antidepressant medications or counseling, "most people benefit from a combination of the two. Some studies have shown that antidepressant drug therapy combined with psychotherapy appears to have better results than either therapy alone. ("Major Depression," 2006, Medline Plus Encyclopedia)

The most common medications include older tricyclic antidepressants, monoamine oxidase inhibitors, selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs), and some newer antidepressant drugs. Tricyclics and MOIS have severe side effects, which tend to cause most therapists to prescribe SSRIs, but even these newer remedies have risks, particularly increasing the danger of suicidal tendencies in children. Therapy can take a variety of forms, including cognitive behavior therapy to minimize negative thinking in the patient, therapy specifically designed to cope with stressful life circumstances, or other forms of one-on-one or group counseling.