Diseases
Depression… its Causes, Symptoms and Treatment
It’s one of the most recent diseases
in our world nowadays, which is called “major depressive disorder”. Our
community treats with this disease by more than one wrong way, either like
organic diseases and be afraid of seeking medical attention, or like a period
of sadness and it will pass, so we find it so urgent to spread the awareness
about the mental health, to make the people treat with it like any disease, may
it helps to decrease the number of complicated cases.
What is Depression?
It’s a chronic disease, doctors deal
with it like diabetes and hypertension, so it needs patience from both the
patient and his family to complete the treatment marathon to find the solution
in the track end.
What are its Causes?
Till now,
there is not any obvious cause of depression but there are a lot of
precipitating factors which may lead to depression anyway, like:
- Disturbance of neurotransmitters which are responsible for mood, happiness level, and satisfaction as: (dopamine, serotonin, epinephrine, and norepinephrine).
- Genetic factor plays a very important role in the depression, where the studies showed that, the people with depression in their family members are more liable for depression 2.8-10 time in comparison to those who hadn’t ever get depressed.
- Presence of an event in the individual life making him traumatized is an important factor to make him depressed, as a study which is published in 2015, it says “the individuals who get trauma in their life, are more liable for depression 2.5-12 times more than normal people”.
- And there are a lot of other factors like organic diseases as cancer, Alzheimer and AIDS.
After we knew the depression and its causes, we have to know the symptoms.
When Can I Say “I Should Go to the Doctor?”
- Low mood most of the time.
- Feeling low energy every day.
- Lack of concentration.
- Losing more than 5% of the weight in one month without obvious cause.
- Sleeping disturbance either insomnia or sleeping a lot.
- Thoughts of suicide or self-harm.
- Oversensitivity for everything.
If a patient complains 5 of these factors at least or more during one week or more,
he should go to the doctor to get medical care.
What will
happen if the patient didn’t seek medical care?
What are Depression Complications?
- Suicide and self-harm.
- Drug abuse and addiction.
- Familial and social problems.
- Chronic diseases.
- Withdrawal from the society and troubles in his/her educational and work life.
Here, the
question is “which makes the patients afraid of treatment?”
How is the Depressed Patient Treated, and what’s the Effectiveness of the Treatment?
We can say
loudly “yes”, the depression is very complicated and contains a lot of types
and factors, most of it can be treated and the patient becomes able to get good
mental health during a few weeks and some of them need long term care.
There is more
than one way of management in the simple types, if the patient goes to the
doctor in the first days of the disease, he just needs doctor’s assurance and
making him feel safe.
After that
the doctor uses medications like: “selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor,
tricycle antidepressant ….etc”
In addition
to medication, there is psychotherapy which helps to rearrange the patient
thoughts and teach him how to deal with the disease.
There are
some cases which require from the patient staying in the hospital under
supervision, if there are any fears of suicide or self-harm.
If no improvement occurs, doctors go to non-pharmacological treatment ways, like
“electroconvulsive therapy and transcranial magnetic stimulation”.
Finally, we can say
the depression is a disease like any disease needs consultation, assessment and
treatment.
If we take
care of it from the start, the solutions will be very easy and simple, but if
we deal with it as a stigma, we will be unable to control the incidence of the
suicide and victims.
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