Creating A Healing Plan For Clinical Depression
Oftentimes, depression kicks in when you least expect it. It may gradually happen over time. One day, you may wake up and may not want to get out of bed, and you may realize that you are dreading the day. If this sounds like you, take the time to read this article on tips to recognizing and coping with depression.
If you are depressed, you should try to work on something productive for at least 30-60 minutes per day. Doing absolutely nothing all day can cause a vicious cycle where you not only have your "base" depression symptoms, but also depression because you are unable to get anything done.
Stop the bad and negative behavior when you are with others. Crying, complaining, and talking about your problems will elicit sympathy from your friends and family, but this sympathy also maintains the depressive behavior. Change the behavior and receive the rewards.
If your depression is of the type that has an obvious cause, try cognitive behavioral therapy. This type of therapy focuses on creating measurable goals that, when met, will probably reduce the severity of the depression. Examples include losing a certain amount of weight or reducing your debt by a certain amount.
Get your personal life in order. When you suffer from depression, even ordinary tasks can get overwhelming. Get organized using small, easy to complete goals and you can keep from getting bogged down in the everyday duties that can keep you from working on your depression and can even make your symptoms worse.
One of the best ways to battle depression is to eat a healthy, well-balanced diet and avoid emotional eating. People often times tend to overeat as a way to escape their depression and avoid dealing with uncomfortable inner feelings. By overeating, you are only putting off feelings that need to be dealt with and, in the long run, making your depression worse.
One secret to controlling your depression to be constantly aware of the fact that you do in fact guide and influence your own thinking. Take the word "depressed" and remove it from your vocabulary! This kind of negative term is conducive to a negative way of thinking. Replace the word with something like "lesser mood" to describe how you're feeling instead, and you'll react more positively.
Keeping a personal journal can be a very effective method of trying to cope with your depression. A daily journal gives you a safe place to vent your frustrations and explore your feelings, safe from prying eyes and unwanted questions. As you reflect back on your journal over time, you can chart your progress, track your status emotionally and pick up patterns of behavior or possible triggers for problem issues.
Take all prescriptions as your doctor instructs. Never take either less or more medication than you are prescribed, and never stop the medication suddenly without talking to your doctor first, as it may be dangerous. In many cases, it is a good idea to get patients off their medications slowly, since a sudden halt can backfire.
Laughter really is the best medicine. Research shows that even a smile can raise serotonin levels, the same effect that many antidepressants give. Instead of wallowing in your sadness with depressing music and tear-jerking tragedies, break out the stand-up albums or put on a silly comedy. Even if you don't feel like it when it starts, you will find yourself smiling and laughing despite yourself by the end!
Control your stress. Feeling stressed out can intensify the feelings of depression. You should take a good look at your life to determine what is causing your stress. As you determine these stress factors, you can then actively work to minimize the impact they have.
A great way to deal with depression is to be physically active. Exercise is great for your body and mind because it releases natural chemicals in your body that are meant to help you feel better. The improvements in your body will also help you to feel great about yourself and boost your self esteem.
You should feel better after reading those tips when it comes to depression. That is a lot to process, but at least you should have an idea of what to do and where to begin with treating your depression. In addition, you can return to Accelerated TMS this list if you need.
New Method to Improve Brain Stimulation Treatments
Stimulating brain regions to treat Parkinson’s disease, depression, and other disorders involving brain damage could become more precise, thanks to a new way of mapping the brain circuitry involved in those conditions.
The study describing this research, “Brain stimulation and brain lesions converge on common causal circuits in neuropsychiatric disease,” was published in Nature Human Behaviour.
Depression and Parkinson’s both associate with well-defined brain lesions and can be treated with deep brain stimulation (DBS) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).
Both techniques involve stimulating electrical activity in specific brain regions. However, proving that a targeted location in the brain actually corresponds to a specific point of damage and that this affects a symptom of interest has been a challenge.
The controlled experiments that enable scientists to map neural circuits in animals rarely can be repeated in humans.
An international team of researchers addressed this issue by analyzing data on the well-defined brain lesions associated with Parkinson’s and depression, and that are commonly treated with both DBS and TMS.
The team examined 14 separate datasets, comprising 461 lesions, 151 TMS sites, and 101 DBS sites, comparing lesions, symptoms, treatments and outcomes — such as where depression improved versus showing no change. The datasets included individuals who had been evaluated and treated for depression after having strokes or penetrating brain injuries, as well as patients receiving DBS for Parkinson’s or epilepsy for whom changes in depressive symptoms were measured as a potential side effect.
“This is a new technique that uses existing data on patients with brain damage to develop new treatment targets for real-world patients with similar symptoms,” Shan Siddiqi, MD, the study’s principal investigator, said in a press release.
Using their technique, Siddiqi and his collaborators identified a pattern of activity — a neural circuit — common to brain lesions, DBS, and TMS.
To demonstrate their approach can be applied to neuropsychiatric disorders more generally, they next examined 29 lesions and 95 stimulation sites associated with Parkinson’s motor symptoms.
Similar to their depression-related results, the team found that lesions associated with symptoms such as tremors and rigidity were connected to the same circuits as the stimulation sites used to treat them.
Overall, these shared patterns imply that brain lesions associated with neuropsychological conditions, as well as both TMS and DBS sites used to treat them are all connected to similar circuits.
https://parkinsonsnewstoday.com/2021/07/15/method-improves-brain-stimulation-therapy-parkinsons/