Coping With Depression: Advice To Help You Through It
Depression is a very serious medical issue, and you should take appropriate steps to treat it. But it takes a lot of effort, and sometimes you don't know how to deal with it. This article contains several useful tips to help you manage your depression and live your life to the fullest.
Get out of the house and socialize. Get involved in activities outside the home and meet people. Even calling on friends and family can help. Let them know about your struggles with depression, and ask for their help. Have them call you out when you start displaying negativity, and to praise or compliment you when you act positively.
Try to challenge the negative habits of thought that come with depression. If negative thoughts about yourself have crept into your head, think about whether or not you would actually say that to someone else. If you wouldn't, you are likely being too hard on yourself. Try to manage your thoughts and make them more constructive. For example, attempt to find some solutions to the problem.
A great way to deal with chronic depression is to keep positive. Negative thinking plays an important role in depression, so combat this a with strategy of positive thinking. Depressed people minimize positive qualities, talents, and accomplishments, whereas happy people focus on a majority of the good in life.
Become more physically active. A healthy body is a necessity for a healthy mind. In addition to the obvious health benefits, exercising releases feel-good chemicals called endorphins. It is these chemicals that give rise to the term "runner's high". It is a natural high, one that is safe and even healthy to become addicted to!
Do here not use the words "depression" and "depressed". Even though they are real words, they carry quite a few extra meanings and that can make feelings of hopelessness seem a lot worse than they really are. Instead, when you are feeling down, think of it as a low mood. It can be easier to raise your mood than to think of battling depression, even though you're doing the same thing.
If depression is the only company you keep, you will keep yourself depressed! As hard as it may be to face the world or anyone in it when you are feeling depressed, seeing a friend or family member may be the best remedy. Even if it's just to take your mind off of your troubles temporarily, you will find the company of others can go a long way in making you feel better!
Becoming interested in the arts is a great way to help you beat your depression. If you like paintings or sculpture be sure to schedule lots of visits to local museums. Likewise if you like music be sure to visit as many concerts and shows as you are able to.
Drink plenty of water. Everyone knows that plenty of water is essential to body health, however, it is also crucial to mental health. Having a good and positive attitude is physically more difficult when you are dehydrated. Dehydration can cause your brain to begin to shut down, causing even a normally happy person to become down.
Depression plagues our society today. More and more people find themselves in some psychologist's office asking for help. There is no shame in seeking help, in fact it is exactly what you need. Coming here and reading this article was but the first step on your journey to becoming a happier person.
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/