Living with major depression can severely impact your ability to go about life as you see fit. But as debilitating as major depressive disorder (MDD) can be, there are evidence-based strategies and treatment options available that can help you achieve a lasting and worthwhile recovery.
If you need help with major depressive disorder, contact us at Elite DNA by finding a location near you and scheduling an appointment today.
Understanding Major Depressive Disorder (MDD)
Major depressive disorder is one of the most common mental health disorders in the United States today. According to a survey cited by the National Institute of Mental Health, roughly 21 million adults in the United States experienced at least one major depressive episode in 2021. This number translates to 8.3% of adults in the U.S.
Clinical depression is much more than just feeling sad from time to time. It is a pervasive pattern of severely reduced mood, an inability to experience positive emotions, and includes negative physical and mental health symptoms that can cause severe disruption in daily life.
In diagnosing depression, mental health professionals turn to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) published by the American Psychiatric Association. This is the standard text for identifying the core symptoms of mental and mood disorders, and lists the following depression symptoms:
- Feeling empty, hopeless, or sad most of the day nearly every day
- Reduced interest in activities that used to be important
- Unintentional weight loss or gain
- Oversleeping or undersleeping
- Reduced ability to focus or concentrate
- Excessive feelings of guilt or worthlessness
- Thoughts of death or suicidal ideation
A mental health professional may diagnose you with major depression if you experience several of these symptoms for over two weeks, they cause substantial disruption in your day-to-day life, and they are not the result of medical conditions. They can also rule out similar but distinct mental health disorders, such as persistent depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, or postpartum depression.
Like many other mental health conditions, MDD occurs on a spectrum. People can experience mild, moderate, or severe depression, with each level of severity leading to more intense and pervasive symptoms.
Coping with Depression
Learning healthy coping strategies is one simple and effective way to help ease the symptoms of depression. Coping with MDD isn’t always easy — but making an effort to build a reservoir of adaptive coping skills can vastly improve your mental health for years to come. Some of the best strategies you can start applying today include:
Lifestyle Changes
Making healthy lifestyle changes is one of the most effective, albeit challenging, strategies to combat your depression symptoms. There are many lifestyle changes you can make to help combat your mood disorder and live a healthier and happier life, and some of the most effective include:
Physical Exercise
Studies investigating the connection between depression and exercise have found significant reductions in symptoms when people start a new exercise routine. For some people, this may mean hitting the gym or starting to run, but the intensity of physical activity isn’t as important as simply getting out and moving more. Some of the different ways you can incorporate more movement into your routine include:
- Going for regular walks around your neighborhood
- Cycling to work
- Hiking with friends
- Joining a yoga or spin class
- Kayaking or paddleboarding
The challenge with exercise is that the symptoms of depression often make it difficult for people to begin and maintain a healthy physical routine. Depression can lead to fatigue, a lack of motivation, and difficulty enjoying exercise. Yet if you can break through this initial barrier, it’s more likely you’ll start to see improvement in your major depressive disorder.
Healthy Sleep Patterns
Sleep disruption is often one of the first symptoms of depression to appear. If you start to experience hypersomnia or insomnia, this can quickly lead to an escalation of your depression symptoms as healthy sleep plays a critical role in mood regulation.
Incorporating healthy sleep hygiene practices can help curb this disruption and may ease depression symptoms as a result. Some practices you can start incorporating into daily life include:
- Keeping a consistent bedtime and wake time
- Avoiding caffeine in the evening
- Turning off screens and devices an hour before bed
- Creating a relaxing nighttime routine
- Keeping your bedroom dark, cool, and quiet
These are time-tested strategies for helping improve your sleep quality, which can have substantial downstream effects on improving your depression symptoms.
Challenging Negative Thoughts
Challenging negative thoughts is a strategy used in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for depression that can be an incredibly powerful coping tool. People living with depression often experience intense and invasive negative thought patterns, which can quickly lead to a spiral of sad feelings and an experience of hopelessness.
If you can learn to recognize these patterns of negative thoughts, you can challenge them to prevent this destructive spiral. This is essentially a three-part process:
- Identifying negative thoughts
- Recognizing that the negative thought isn’t necessarily true or rational
- Replacing the negative thoughts with something more true or realistic
Simple as it sounds, this is a powerful tool for managing depression and typically plays a key role in talk therapy approaches.
Engaging in Self-Care
Self-care is an intentional practice that emphasizes improving your emotional, physical, and mental well-being. These practices can help you reduce your overall stress levels, not get overwhelmed by depression symptoms, and provide space for activities that are important or meaningful to you.
Everyone’s self-care practices are different, but some examples may include:
- Making an effort to eat healthy
- Going to a medical doctor for a check-up
- Learning a new skill
- Spending time with loved ones
- Nurturing a spiritual or religious practice
- Practicing mindfulness meditation
These activities can help you de-stress, find peace, and recover from debilitating depression symptoms.
Professional Help for Depression
Sometimes coping strategies simply aren’t enough. Depression can be incredibly difficult to overcome on your own, and seeking out professional mental health support becomes essential to achieve recovery. Thankfully, there are several effective, evidence-based treatment options that can help with managing major depressive disorder and starting you on the path to a lifelong recovery:
Therapy for MDD
Talk therapy has long been the gold standard for effective depression treatment options. Talking with a therapist can help you understand the root cause of your mental health difficulties, teach you actionable coping strategies for when your depression symptoms flare up, and provide you with long-term support to maintain the progress you make in treatment.
There are several different talk therapy modalities to choose from as well. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is the most common and has decades of evidence supporting its effectiveness. Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) for depression is a newer approach that emphasizes mindfulness practices and emotional regulation. Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) focuses on accepting difficult thoughts or emotions as they are while committing yourself to behaviors that align with your goals.
Whichever approach is best suited for your personal depression treatment plan, therapy can help you make rapid and substantial improvements to your mental health.
Psychiatry for MDD
Psychiatry takes a more medicalized approach to treating depression, often using targeted medications that can help reduce the negative symptoms you experience. When people develop major depressive disorder, certain neurotransmitters in the brain can fall below typical levels seen in the average healthy adult. Antidepressants for MDD can help restore these neurotransmitters to normal levels, which can reduce symptoms and help you to achieve recovery.
Medication Management for MDD
Medication management is an intervention designed to help people who have started taking psychiatric medication find the right dosage and timing to maximize their results. Medication management tracks your progress from the beginning, follows up on your results, and makes alterations to your medication regimen as needed. Often, this can mean switching medications entirely. There are dozens of antidepressant medications for MDD, but finding the right one for you can be a process. Medication management professionals can support you during this period.
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for MDD
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is one of the cutting-edge brain stimulation therapies that can rapidly relieve symptoms and help people achieve recovery, even when traditional treatment options haven’t worked. TMS is essentially a refinement of electroconvulsive therapy, sending targeted electrical impulses deep within the brain to regions that have been impacted due to MDD. Unlike electroconvulsive therapy, TMS targets only these regions and nowhere else.
This can help kickstart underactive brain regions, rapidly improving mood and a host of other symptoms through a completely non-invasive outpatient procedure.
Get Help from the Experts at Elite DNA
Navigating the path to recovery can be incredibly difficult on your own – particularly when you’re living with depression symptoms day after day. But getting the professional treatment you need doesn’t have to be difficult.
Our team can help walk you through our comprehensive mental health treatment options, find the treatment methods that fit best for you, and help you take the next step toward living a happier, healthier life in recovery.
If you’re ready to get help, reach out to our experts at Elite DNA by finding a location near you or calling our team for a no-obligation consultation.
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