Postpartum depression is a very difficult and tragic problem that is all too common these days. Postpartum depression treatment must be very mindful that the most important issue at hand is the safety of the baby. As devestated as a new mother will often feel in the throws of depression after giving birth, it is nothing compared to the pain she will feel if she is not prevented from injuring or neglecting her child during this difficult time.
Bipolar Depression Treatment
by Marcus Maybourne on December 18th, 2009 § 0
Formerly called manic depression, treatment for bipolar disorder is complicated because it includes both very high highs and very low lows within the same individual. Most clinicians these days feel that bipolar disorder should be treated using medications regardless of whether there is psychotherapy. I have seen many individuals for whom bipolar medications induced dramatic improvement and helped them to get on with their life.
Natural Treatments For Depression
by Marcus Maybourne on December 15th, 2009 § 0
When we talk about natural treatments for depression, most people are probably thinking about herbal supplements to cure depression. There are herbal supplements that can be helpful for depression, but they are definitely not cures. However, there is an argument to be made that natural depression treatments may be better in a lot of ways that precription depression treatments.
Treatment Resistant Depression
by Marcus Maybourne on December 15th, 2009 § 2
We established in our article about depression treatment now that there are many different forms of depression and that there are many different ways to go about the treatment of depression. This brings us to a sticky situation for patients and clinicians alike: what if the treatments don’t work?
Treatment-resistant depression sometimes begins early on in life and continues from there. This used to be called depressive personality disorder, but this diagnosis was eliminated in the last update to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Now there is dysthymia, which is long-term, low-grade depression, and major depressive disorder, chronic.
Types of Depression Treatment
by Marcus Maybourne on December 15th, 2009 § 0
Depression treatment is one of the single most sought-after mental health services. There are many different styles and approaches that clinicians can use, from pure medication management to brief therapy to family interventions to psychoanalysis. Often multiple approaches to treating depression are combined, and there is some empirical evidence that multiple concurrent treatment modalities tend to be more effective than single ones.
This may be because “depression” is such a nebulous term. Like every psychological disorder, there are specific diagnostic criteria for depression. However, there has been some debate about the validity of these criteria, simply because th symptoms are so common, cover such a wide area, and are subsumed by so many other psychiatric conditions. So you could say that there are as many treatments for depression as there are types of depression.
Anxious?
by Marcus Maybourne on December 15th, 2009 § 0
Definitions
Anxious is usually pronounced “æng-shes,” “ænk-shes,” “æn-shes,” “æng-shus,” “ænk-shus,” or “æn-shus.”
It describes a state of feeling full of anxiety or worry, disquieted, or fearful. In this article we will explore the different forms of anxiety, their causes and treatments.
Anxious Thoughts
When people refer to anxious thoughts they generally mean thoughts that are full of worry or apprehension. There is an additional element to this type of cognitive anxiety, however, and that is the subjective feeling that one’s thoughts are out of one’s control. For the average person, this experience is itself rather disquieting, and anxiety disorders which are characterized by prolonged and frequent occurences of this type of anxious thinking can be extremely troubling.
Do You Need A Sleep Video?
by Marcus Maybourne on December 15th, 2009 § 0
A sleep video can sometimes be helpful to light sleepers or people who suffer from insomnia. There are a few different types of sleep videos that you may come across, each serving different types of psychological needs. The first thing to consider if you are having trouble sleeping on a regular basis is that it may be caused by a medical problem.
There are a number of medical disorders that can bring about insomnia, so you should always see your primary care doctor first to rule out any problems of this sort. If you were to find some medication, technique, or sleeping video that helped you without taking this critical step first, you could end up hurting yourself in the long run by ignoring the underlying medical disorder.
Drug Detox: Definitions & Tips
by Marcus Maybourne on December 15th, 2009 § 0
Drug detox primarily refers to the period of time during which a drug of abuse or dependency remains in a person’s system after cessation of use. Depending on the substance, this period can be characterized by dangerous physiological symptoms that should be monitored by a physician. Detox from alcohol or other depressants, for example, can cause death if unsupervised.
Drug detoxification also sometimes refers to the process of breaking an addiction, or to the type of treatment that is receive during the course of this process. We will examine a number of concepts related to drug detox in depth.
Is Dog Depression Real?
by Marcus Maybourne on October 13th, 2009 § 0
In my opinion, the idea of dog depression is a byproduct of the outdated biogenic amine theory of depression. It is the idea that depression is caused by a lack of certain neurotransmitters. It would follow that if this were true for humans, and animals use the same neurochemicals, then animals could also suffer from chemical depression.
However, when it appears to you that your dog is depressed and you are wondering, “What are the signs of dog depression?”, you should instead wash the idea of depression from your mind and think about nutrition.
Anxiety and Depression
by Marcus Maybourne on October 13th, 2009 § 0
Anxiety and depression are two of the most basic psychological diagnoses. They also represent components of many other psychiatric and medical illnesses. When dealing with either anxiety or depression, it is extremely important that a clinician rule out any medical causes of these sensations prior to beginning psychotherapeutic treatment.
Even if medical causes are found, this does not necessarily mean that the client will not be able to benefit from psychotherapy. In some cases medical conditions can coincide with mental ones, such that an adjustment of each is in order. After all, the mind is a part of the body and the body is a part of the mind. There simply is no separation; each is a part of the total organism and each is fully connected to the other.
Psychiatric Depression Treatments
by Marcus Maybourne on October 6th, 2009 § 0
There are many effective types of psychological depression treatment. However there is little understanding in the lay community about the causes and treatments for depression. Many individuals have fallen under the impression that the best treatment for depression is pharmacological. However, the medications that are available for depressed individuals are less than ideal. They have a number of side effects, and recent meta-analyses show that they may not be as effective as previously thought. In fact, in most cases they are no more effective than placebo.
The entire idea for modern antidepressant medications comes from the presumption that there are certain biological chemicals (neurotransmitters known as biogenic amines) that are missing in depressed people. This is what your psychiatrist means when he tells you that your depression is a brain disease caused by a lack of serotonin or norepinephrine. The problem with this idea is that it is incorrect, as has been disproven for quite some time. The medications based on this presumption seemed to work, though, and so they kept making them in spite of not knowing why they work. To this day many of the psychiatric medications that you will find are not based on any modern theory of neurochemistry.
Depression Treatment
by Marcus Maybourne on October 6th, 2009 § 0
My take on depression treatment is this: there are a number of different forms of depression that individuals can suffer from. And this is not merely to make the distinction between traditional depression and manic depression, which is the antiquated term for bipolar disorder.
Many people like to talk about their theories of depression, saying that depression is anger turned inward, or that depression is a biochemical disorder, a shortage of neurotransmitters, or a way of coping with hopeless situations. It seems like everyone has a pet theory of depression, but my opinion is that treatments for depression have to match the symptoms of depression. Because depression itself is too broad a category to simply assign one treatment for or to even say it’s just one disorder. Diagnostically you can break it down into specifiers and similar disorders such as dysthymia. There used to even be a depressive personality disorder but this disorder is no longer acknowledged in the current diagnostic manual.
Hello world!
by Marcus Maybourne on August 20th, 2009 § 0
Hello, my name is Marcus Maybourne. Thank you for visiting my blog. I would like to use this space to discuss my interest in health psychology and to connect with others who share this interest. I will discuss some of my own experiences and my opinions about what is helpful, what is not helpful, and what types of advocacy may benefit our field.
