Is there Hope for Depression?

When the topic of depression arises, different people will have different ideas and feelings about it.  There are some who see it as purely physically induced while others see it as caused by distorted thinking.  With so many ideas of what causes depression it makes a person wonder what the right answer is.  We teach at SFT that depression can be induced by a physical cause or a mental cause.

 

An example of a physical cause could come from an actual brain injury from a car accident or any type of head trauma.  Another physical cause comes from a chemical imbalance in the peripheral nervous system.  This can be successfully treated with the proper medication and we always recommend that a person do what their psychiatrist tells them to do in that situation.

 

What about the non-physical side of depression and its cause?  Most people who suffer from a form of depression suffer from a non-physical depression which comes from our own distorted thinking.  For example, a person might hear a group of people laughing and think, “They must be laughing at me.”  This person now feels a low self-esteem and/or becomes angry at that group of people. This person could have prevented these feelings by avoiding the use of the mind reading and personalization thinking errors.  They also have a high “me factor” which also limits a person’s ability to see the whole picture.  This combination of faulty thinking has caused this person to have a distorted perception which opened the door for depression.

 

Is their hope for this type of thinking?  With the correct type of training, there is hope for this type of thinking.  In fact, an article recently published by U.S. News and World Reports stated that those who went through cognitive behavioral therapy(CBT) showed improvement in feelings of depression.  Many who completed training had an MRI done which showed a change in brain activity in regions that are associated with depression.  The report also said 59 percent had complete remission.[1]  As SFT Awareness grows, as well as CBT in general, more are going to notice that their depression comes from their own negative and distorted thinking.  There have been several who have been trained at SFT who no longer need depression medications.  That does not mean that everyone needs to quit taking their medications, but it does mean that there are more options than what is presented to the public.  There IS hope for the depressed and addicted not only for those who now teach at SFT, but also for those who are yet to be taught.

 

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[1] Kotz, deborah. “Get Healthier and Happier: You may need a lifestyle fix as well as antidepressants.”  U.S. News and World Reports.  http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/2007/12/12/get-healthier-and-happier.html?PageNr=2 (accessed February 13, 2008).