Depression can take many forms. Many depressed people struggle with low mood and feeling miserable, but others feel “flat” or “nothing”, as if joy departed and never came back. Some people’s depressions last a few weeks, others can go on for years.
Sometimes depression only happens once, other times it returns over and over, and sometimes it just lingers at a place where you are not fully depressed but not feeling yourself either. Some depressions take all your energy away, a can’t-get-out-of-bed kind of experience; others are agitated, an irritable and energized kind of miserable that is very painful. Some depressions are exogenous, where they occur in response to significant stressors or losses; some are endogenous, where they appear to have no outside cause whatsoever. Some depressions are unipolar – meaning individuals move from being not depressed to being depressed and the other way; some depressions are bipolar – see bipolar spectrum disorders for more. With this staggering array of presentations, a helpful question to answer is what kind of depression do you have?
Thankfully, depression has many treatment options, both in terms of talk therapy and medication. At GSWC we offer cognitive behavior therapy for depression and its various forms.
Research found that CBT for depression is as effective as medication for mild to moderate depression and has additional benefits for more severe depression when taken with medication.