Fighting depression takes more than antidepressants. Matter of fact, antidepressants play a small role in the fight. Supplements and vitamins are also not as effective alone when it comes to relieving patients of depression. Over the years, physicians and scientists have come up with new methods to fight this menace. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation is one of the methods that has proven to offer great results. We offer this treatment at TMS Brain Care, and it has proven to be effective to a large proportion of patients.
According to Robert D. McMullen, MD, you can find relief by finding the cause and avoiding a situation that might lead to profound depression. Below are the four main treatments to keep off depression in 2018. You can learn more by calling a doctor at (212) 362-9635 in New York City, USA.
Here the four Major Treatments for Depression in 2018
1. Changing Behavior and Diet Leading
Loneliness and the feeling of it make you depressed. The moment you feel like everyone has left you and you are all alone in this wide world, depression sets in. This is especially true if you are used to being surrounded by people you love. A good case would be a person suffering from a chronic disease whose spouse has just left. The loneliness that comes with such a scenario will definitely make you depressed.
• Keep in touch with friends and family – You can avoid such a situation by surrounding yourself with friends, people you care for, and who care for you. You not only need to know you have friends, but also keep in touch with them by calling them, visiting them, and most importantly, always talking to them. You can make a schedule to visit them or call them weekly. By so doing, you will feel loved, the loneliness will wear away and so will depression.
• Attend social events – The other way to fight loneliness is to be in social gatherings even when you do not feel like going. You do not have to love the social functions you attend, just force yourself, show up and have fun just like everyone else. This involves pretending like you do not feel lonely and you are not depressed. Go ahead and do things that normal people do. Avoid locking yourself in your room when you could go out and dance in a nightclub full of happy people.
• Sleep Normally, not more than 8 hours – You need to maintain your sleep cycle. When you are depressed, you feel like staying in bed for longer than normal. Even when you feel like you cannot move from the bed, sleep exacerbates the situation.
• View things positively – You need to keep yourself distracted from negativity. Going over your failures and negative aspects of your life will not help. You can do this by doing things you enjoy.
• Exercise – Exercise has been proven to fight depression. A research done on profoundly depressed people separated them in three groups, one group had a trainer forcing them to exercise for about an hour every day, another group was left to train in the gym, and another attended yoga lessons. The group that was forced to train showed significant improvements with time. While it is not easy to force yourself to train for about one hour each day, you should try. Each week, you need to exercise for about three hours well spread out within the week. If you cannot exercise vigorously, walk at least two hours a day – this is as good as exercise.
• Lightbox – You can use a lightbox, directing light to yourself every morning at the same time. You can also use a lightbox with a timer – here, the light rotates as time goes to wake you up gently. This is a treatment done by Robert D. McMullen, MD at TMS Brain Center.
• Change your Diet – It has been shown that the more vegan you are, the faster you recover. Ergo, you need to avoid animal products such as eggs, milk and milk by-products, and meat and instead take vegetables, nuts, and fruits. Fish is great too especially when eaten in large amounts. You can also take multivitamins.
Mushrooms and marijuana have not been proven to reduce depression, and as such, you should not consider them. Some of the dietary products that have been proven to suppress depression include fish oil, isotol, probiotics, lithium, and L-menthol folate. Specific doses of these supplements need to be taken for good results – see a psychiatrist to help you with the doses. Other substances include vitamin D and calcium. Whichever supplement you take, ensure you take the right dosage to avoid medication side effects.
2. Psychotherapy
Therapy will still reign in 2018. It is about finding a therapist or psychiatrist that you can connect with and one you feel comfortable talking to and talking with. A therapist should feel like a friend.
Counter behavior therapy is one of the most important forms of therapies that you can engage in. This involves figuring ways to change the way you view things and the way you react to situations and conditions. The good thing is, counter behavior therapy is not prolonged and does not have to occur at the same time every week or every month. The psychotherapy will occur for a short while and then the therapist will want to evaluate your progress.
EMDR is another form of psychotherapy that has enormous evidence supporting it. This involves having negative thoughts and moving your eyes in a given way to suppress these thoughts. This has been shown to be pretty effective with a horde of research and scholarly articles supporting its use.
Your therapist will design the most psychotherapy session for your depression to ensure you have the best results within a short time. One form of therapy may work, but your therapist might try different forms to give you results fast and effectively. You can talk to a doctor from https://tmsbraincare.com/, our clinic, which operates in New York City, USA.
3. Medical Treatment
There are different medications to choose from. Medicines have evolved and you might find medicines that you do not even feel like you are taking thanks to their lack of side effects. Your doctor should be able to prescribe medicines that have been shown to have the least side effects. The problem with traditional antidepressants is that they leave a horde of uncomfortable side effects as Robert D. McMullen, MD observes. In 2018, however, things have changed for the better.
To start with, you need to take medications with no side effects at all or start by taking low doses of any medication. One of the best antidepressants is lamotrigine. It is used on patients who are sensitive to drugs, those who have problems with oversleeping and overeating, those with mood swings, those whose conditions are characterized by bad events, and those who experience severe side effects from the use of antidepressants. If a drug is showing severe side effects after use, it means that you are taking a higher dose than you should. As such, you need to take the dosage a little lower. The normal dosage for different antidepressants is between 600 and 800 mg per day.
Your doctor might prescribe you taking different antidepressants at the same time. This means that you will be spreading the risk of side effects and getting better results because you are treating the depression from different angles. This will mean you taking low doses of these different medications for the best results.
According to Robert D. McMullen, MD, it is advisable to avoid the use of exotic medications and those that have not been proven to suppress depression. A lot of people are going for ketamine injections, which are being used by most people. These injections are affordable and they help your mood for a few days then you can go and have the injections one more time. But to fight depression, you need a medication that works the same way as ketamine, but gives long lasting results. You cannot have an IV injection every week for the rest of your life. Again, ketamine fails at times in its efficacy.
Half of the people who are prone to depression are bipolar. This means that they have mood swings and can give up on antidepressants. If you have tried different medications that do not work, chances are that your mood will change and you may give up on antidepressants forever. To be on the safe side, try antidepressants that have been proven to work – lamotrigine and lithium, in the right dosage, have been shown to offer results that do not disappoint. Being bipolar should not be taken to mean a bad thing and no negativity should be attached to it.
If the antidepressants you are taking are not working, stop taking them. There is no point in taking medications for a year or for several months with no results. You can always try something new and something with the backing of many people. This is where you need to work with a psychiatrist like Robert D. McMullen, MD to get the best choices in 2018. Learn more by visiting https://tmsbraincare.com/.
4. Electrical Stimulation of the Brain
If you are resistant to medication and behavioral changes, you can try electrical stimulation of the brain. This method is relatively expensive and it is painful, but it has been shown to bear results. Here, needles are injected deep into your brain and connected to a pacemaker somewhere on your chest to stimulate some parts of your brain. There are different forms of treatment including TMS, offered by Robert D. McMullen, MD at TMS Brain Center.
Another form of brain stimulation is vagus nerve stimulation. Here, the vagus nerve is connected to your brain and every 30 seconds there is an electrical impulse going to the brain. This has been used by about forty thousand Americans for epilepsy, but it has also proven significant in the fight of depression. This treatment takes up to four months to bring results. If no medications are working for you, this is an ideal choice. A psychiatrist might also choose to ruin electricity from one side of the brain to the other. This involves sending electrical impulses from the shoulders to the brain.
Another form of electrical stimulation is ECT. It involves passing a high amount of electricity into the brain to induce a seizure. This is a method that has been used since the 1940s and it works efficiently. With a controlled seizure, a patient of depression will find peace after the short period of paralysis. It is normally used on people with severe depression and those who are delusional. A person that blames themselves for causing a civil war because of their sins will do well with this form of electrical stimulation.
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, TMS, comes as a better form of ECT. It is safer, does not involve you becoming paralyzed for a short while, and you can take it and go on your daily business. The main reason for using TMS, however, is because it is durable. Unlike some other medications and treatment forms that might see you relapse in six months, TMS offers long-lasting results. Even when the depression relapses, a patient will only need a few treatments and they are better to their normal state. It has been shown that TMS stimulates the brain to start healing itself. The brain will realize that there are things that are not going on well and initiate self-healing. Call (212) 362-9635 to learn more.
Conclusion
By understanding the cause of depression, your therapist will recommend the best treatment for you. Each day, there is research going on to find the best new treatment. The treatment can involve changes in diet, behavior, and new medications with fewer side effects or many more. While medical research has been going on for a long time, and new treatments are coming up, you still need to work with a doctor.
When it comes to choosing a treatment, Robert D. McMullen, MD recommends choosing a proven treatment, one with a horde of medical research backing it up. The methods above have been proven to work. ECT, TMS, and vagus nerve stimulation have a horde of medical research backing them and you can look at them online.
It does not hurt to combine these treatments. You can start by changing behavior and seeing a psychiatrist to help you out with medications and their dosages. When everything else fails or when you need fast results, you can turn to electrical stimulation of the brain. Safety is key when you are choosing any medical or therapeutic treatment. You do not need a form of treatment that will leave you with side effects or leave your esteem wounded. Always strive to fight the cause of depression and other forms of treatment will work well. We at TMS, New York City, offer all forms of help for the depressed.
One Comment
Thanks for article. I’ve written an article on the treatment of tms using this article.