How to Fight Depression and Anxiety
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How to Fight Depression and Anxiety
How to Fight Depression and Anxiety
WebMD Feature from "Psychology Today" Magazine
What's the best way to deal with depression and anxiety? Quickly and definitively. Whatever kicks them off, depression and anxiety both are maintained by styles of thinking that magnify the initial insult and alter the workings of the brain in such a way that the longer an episode exists, the less it takes to set off future episodes.
Anxiety and depression are probably two faces of the same coin. Surveys have long shown that 60 to 70 percent of people with major depression also have an anxiety disorder, while half of those suffering anxiety also have symptoms of clinical depression.
The stress response system is overactive in both disorders. Excess activity of the stress response system sends emotional centers of the brain into overdrive so that negative events make a disproportionate impact and hijack rational response systems. You literally can't think straight. You ruminate over and over about the difficulties and disappointments you encounter until that's all you can focus on.
Researchers believe that some people react with anxiety to stressful life events, seeing danger lurking ahead everywhere—in applying for a job, asking for a favor, asking for a date. And some go beyond anxiety to become depressed, a kind of shutdown in response to anticipated danger.
People who have either condition typically overestimate the risk in a situation and underestimate their own resources for coping. Sufferers avoid what they fear instead of developing the skills to handle the kinds of situations that make them uncomfortable. Often enough, a lack of social skills is at the root. Some types of anxiety—obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, and social phobia—are particularly associated with depression.
The fact that anxiety usually precedes the development of depression presents a huge opportunity for the prevention of depression. Young people especially are not likely to outgrow anxiety on their own; they need to be taught specific mental skills.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) gets at response patterns central to both conditions. And the drugs most commonly used against depression have also been proved effective against an array of anxiety disorders.
Although medication and CBT are equally effective in reducing anxiety/depression, CBT is better at preventing return of the disorder. Patients like it better, too, because it allows them to feel responsible for their own success. What's more, the active coping that CBT encourages creates new brain circuits that circumvent the dysfunctional response pathways.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy teaches people to monitor the environment for the troubling emotional landmines that seem to set them off. That actually changes metabolic activity in the cortex, the thinking brain, to modulate mood states. It works from the top down. Drugs, by contrast, work from the bottom up, modulating neurotransmitters in the brainstem, which drive basic emotional behaviors.
Treatment with CBT averages 12 to 15 weeks, and patients can expect to see significant improvement by six weeks. Drug therapy is typically recommended for months, if not years.
Exercise is an important adjunct to any therapy. Exercise directly alters levels of neurohormones involved in circuits of emotion. It calms the hyperactivity of the nervous system and improves function of the brain's emotion-sensing network. It also improves the ability of the body to tolerate stress. What's more, it changes people's perception of themselves, providing a sense of personal mastery and positive self-regard. It also reduces negative thinking.
However, just telling a distressed person to exercise is futile, as depression destroys initiative. The best thing a loved one can do is to simply announce: "Let's go for a walk." Then accompany the person out the door.
Shalom!
WebMD Feature from "Psychology Today" Magazine
What's the best way to deal with depression and anxiety? Quickly and definitively. Whatever kicks them off, depression and anxiety both are maintained by styles of thinking that magnify the initial insult and alter the workings of the brain in such a way that the longer an episode exists, the less it takes to set off future episodes.
Anxiety and depression are probably two faces of the same coin. Surveys have long shown that 60 to 70 percent of people with major depression also have an anxiety disorder, while half of those suffering anxiety also have symptoms of clinical depression.
The stress response system is overactive in both disorders. Excess activity of the stress response system sends emotional centers of the brain into overdrive so that negative events make a disproportionate impact and hijack rational response systems. You literally can't think straight. You ruminate over and over about the difficulties and disappointments you encounter until that's all you can focus on.
Researchers believe that some people react with anxiety to stressful life events, seeing danger lurking ahead everywhere—in applying for a job, asking for a favor, asking for a date. And some go beyond anxiety to become depressed, a kind of shutdown in response to anticipated danger.
People who have either condition typically overestimate the risk in a situation and underestimate their own resources for coping. Sufferers avoid what they fear instead of developing the skills to handle the kinds of situations that make them uncomfortable. Often enough, a lack of social skills is at the root. Some types of anxiety—obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, and social phobia—are particularly associated with depression.
The fact that anxiety usually precedes the development of depression presents a huge opportunity for the prevention of depression. Young people especially are not likely to outgrow anxiety on their own; they need to be taught specific mental skills.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) gets at response patterns central to both conditions. And the drugs most commonly used against depression have also been proved effective against an array of anxiety disorders.
Although medication and CBT are equally effective in reducing anxiety/depression, CBT is better at preventing return of the disorder. Patients like it better, too, because it allows them to feel responsible for their own success. What's more, the active coping that CBT encourages creates new brain circuits that circumvent the dysfunctional response pathways.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy teaches people to monitor the environment for the troubling emotional landmines that seem to set them off. That actually changes metabolic activity in the cortex, the thinking brain, to modulate mood states. It works from the top down. Drugs, by contrast, work from the bottom up, modulating neurotransmitters in the brainstem, which drive basic emotional behaviors.
Treatment with CBT averages 12 to 15 weeks, and patients can expect to see significant improvement by six weeks. Drug therapy is typically recommended for months, if not years.
Exercise is an important adjunct to any therapy. Exercise directly alters levels of neurohormones involved in circuits of emotion. It calms the hyperactivity of the nervous system and improves function of the brain's emotion-sensing network. It also improves the ability of the body to tolerate stress. What's more, it changes people's perception of themselves, providing a sense of personal mastery and positive self-regard. It also reduces negative thinking.
However, just telling a distressed person to exercise is futile, as depression destroys initiative. The best thing a loved one can do is to simply announce: "Let's go for a walk." Then accompany the person out the door.
Shalom!
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Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Home is where the heart is
Posts: 7,061
Thank you. This was right on the money for me as far as my anxiety issue being present long before my depression. I started having anxiety in very early childhood and it only got worse the older I got.
Member
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Australia
Posts: 170
Great post!!
I suffer bi-polar and generalised anxiety disorder. Recently I've been undergoing CBT with my psychologist. Already I can see the results. Whenever I begin to panic about something, I bring myself back to the here and now. What's happenning right now? How does the coffee smell and taste. How much am I enjoying my cigarette. Things like that. Stay in the here and now. What's going on AT THIS MOMENT....not what has happened in the past or what my or may not happen in the future.
Works for me.
I suffer bi-polar and generalised anxiety disorder. Recently I've been undergoing CBT with my psychologist. Already I can see the results. Whenever I begin to panic about something, I bring myself back to the here and now. What's happenning right now? How does the coffee smell and taste. How much am I enjoying my cigarette. Things like that. Stay in the here and now. What's going on AT THIS MOMENT....not what has happened in the past or what my or may not happen in the future.
Works for me.
Member
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Ontario
Posts: 718
Thankyou for the post teach, I feel CBT helps tremendously, Looking within can provide so many answers that we could never find from others and CBT really helps you identify those thoughts, emotions, safety issues, fears which foster and feed anxiety and depression.
For those that don't have a therapist or don't have access to therapy, I have posted the link here many times, Living Life to the Full offers a free selfhelp course in CBT it is presented in modules and I use the tools I learned there all the time. Once you can identify the problem area's within yourself you can use CBT tools to change those negative thoughts to positive actions and goals. For me that also helps identify the triggers that lead me to binge drink and thus helps me to avert many things that would in the past lead me into drinking and further depression.
Thanks again Teach.
For those that don't have a therapist or don't have access to therapy, I have posted the link here many times, Living Life to the Full offers a free selfhelp course in CBT it is presented in modules and I use the tools I learned there all the time. Once you can identify the problem area's within yourself you can use CBT tools to change those negative thoughts to positive actions and goals. For me that also helps identify the triggers that lead me to binge drink and thus helps me to avert many things that would in the past lead me into drinking and further depression.
Thanks again Teach.
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