Chronic depression, medically known as Major Depressive Disorder, is one of the most severe mental health disorders. It’s a mood disorder that can turn your life upside down.
Although the symptoms of chronic depression vary from person to person, a few common ones include:
• Loss of interest in everyday life activities
• Persistent feelings of sadness and pessimism
• Binge eating or loss of appetite
• Insomnia or hypersomnia
• Body aches and fatigue
• Suicidal thoughts or possible attempts
However, there’s nothing to be worried about as the disorder is treatable.
In this article today, we’re going to talk about a few effective methods to treat chronic depression. It includes both medicines and lifestyle changes. Continue reading to figure out a suitable method for yourself or any of your loved ones:
Allopathic Medications
For chronic depression, psychiatrists usually prescribe antidepressants or benzodiazepines, depending on the symptoms you have. Antidepressants are the first choice as they effectively help treat depression, some anxiety disorders as well as various pain conditions.
On the other hand, benzodiazepines, a kind of tranquilizer, are used to treat certain symptoms of depression such as insomnia, muscle tension, and more. Even though antidepressants and benzodiazepines are both pretty good at what they do, we cannot neglect that their long-term use has several side effects.
That’s right, guys. Long-term use of such allopathic medicines can eventually damage your liver and digestive system. They can also increase your drug tolerance level, which is extremely harmful to your immune system.
Herbal Medications
Now that we’ve established how harmful allopathic medicines can be, let’s see if we have an effective alternative. Thankfully, we do. Numerous herbs and plants bring along natural healing properties, which makes them efficient for the treatment of depression.
The best part of the story is that herbal medications are made using all-natural ingredients; therefore, they’re absolutely safe. If you want to try plants and herbs separately, ashwagandha, saffron, passionflower, Canadian magic mushrooms, chamomile, and CBD shatter are a few great options.
They can be used for as long as you need them since they have minimal to no side effects. They’re readily available at various online dispensaries these days, so getting your hands on one shouldn’t be a problem.
Exercise
As I briefly mentioned above, a few lifestyle changes are necessary in order to cure chronic depression. Yes, you must add exercise to your everyday routine. It’s not as complicated as you think, even a few minutes of the morning can help to get you going.
Regular exercise can significantly increase the number of endorphins in your bloodstream, which helps in eliminating stress, relieving fatigue, boosting energy, and uplifting mood. If you remember, fatigue, persistent low mood, hopelessness, and body aches are some of the most common symptoms of chronic depression.
Hence, regular exercise or increased physical activity in any form is crucial if you wish to keep depression at bay, and that too, naturally. Yoga is another beneficial thing in this regard.
Mindfulness-Based Meditation
Meditation is another efficient remedy to treat chronic depression. It can produce a tranquil mind and a deep state of meditation. It enhances both physical and mental wellbeing in the best possible way.
People tend to overthink things that happened in the past and the future, which eventually takes them into the pits of depression.
How? It involves focusing on one thing, sensation, or thought, which teaches you to live in the moment. Once you learn to live in the present, half of the stress leaves your body right there and then. For this, mindfulness-based meditation is usually the recommended method.
Moreover, you don’t need to join a meditation class for this. Many tutorials available on the internet. It helps you practice meditation in the comfort of your home. It’s worth giving it a shot.
Body Massage
Body massage has several health benefits, both physiological and psychological. Stress relief happens to be one of the health benefits of regular body massage. The lower the stress levels, the easier it will be to get rid of depression.
For appropriate stress management, I suggest you take massage therapy once or twice a week. For this, you can either visit a spa or hire a masseuse. You can also purchase a massage chair if you don’t feel like visiting a spa frequently.
Chair massage therapies are equally beneficial. In fact, they’re cost-effective as you won’t have to pay for them every time you take a body massage. 10-15 minutes of body massage is enough to de-stress your mind and unwind your body.
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive-behavioral therapy works well for the treatment of depression. Since there’s an apprehension in opening up to people, I don’t recommend it as a first thing.
However, it’s essential if the medications and lifestyle changes are not working for you. Cognitive-behavioral therapy will help you by altering your perception of stress. It will help identify and change the underlying thought patterns that are causing depression in the first place.
It’s a psycho-social intervention that will not only help improve your mental health problems but physical symptoms associated with depression, too. Oh, and it will also change all your cognitive distortions, which will prevent such issues from happening again in the future.
The Takeaway
In conclusion, I want you to know that chronic depression is treatable but you must not waste any time and ignore the symptoms. Rest assured, following the treatment methods mentioned above, you can effortlessly keep depression at bay. I hope you get better soon, my friends. Wish you all the best!
