Depression is a serious medical illness that negatively impacts your feelings, thoughts, and actions.
Depression is a serious medical illness that negatively impacts your feelings, thoughts, and actions. Like any illness, it can lead to a range of emotional and physical problems, and can interrupt your ability to function at work and at home. Treatment is complex, and ranges from natural remedies for depression—including psychotherapy—to antidepressant medications that seek to regulate brain chemicals. One treatment avenue that is frequently overlooked—and this is true of most illnesses—is the sufferer’s own ability to influence their condition.
People, including medical professionals qualified to prescribe depression treatments, shy away from suggesting that an individual can trigger significant improvement by changing the way they frame their depression. Nobody wants to give airtime to the toxic belief that those with depression need only to “chin up,” or otherwise gain control of their mood. This is nonsense, and no more viable for someone suffering from depression than it is for a person with cancer or any other serious illness. Nonetheless, framing is among the numerous natural remedies for depression that can have a major positive impact. A recent article published by P.E. Moskowitz is testament to this.
Moskowitz is a celebrated writer and insightful commentator on mental health. In their piece, they explain how a near-death experience led to a cycle of debilitating panic attacks that, eventually, bottomed out in a profound depression from which they could find no escape. Like so many millions of others, they went to therapy and were prescribed antidepressants. And like so many of those same millions, the results were not what they had hoped. In their words, “The panic was quelled, the void, still all around me, at least felt a bit less scary. I didn’t know where I was going, but with the help of the drugs, I cared less. Still, the depression symptoms persisted.”
It wasn’t until Moskowitz realized that their depression also served them as a shield, as “a kind of foil to the life [they] wanted to live” that they were able to gain agency in their struggle, and make real inroads toward feeling better.
Their experience is not just anecdotal, but backed by science. Changing thought patterns is one of psychotherapy’s main goals. As Dr. Arthur Nezu, professor of psychology at Drexel University, observes, “how we view ourselves affects our ability to have an impact on the world.”
This is not to say that a person can simply think their way out of depression. However, mindset can play a constructive role in addressing symptoms, and relieving suffering. Most often, this is achieved through a branch of psychotherapy referred to as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), mindfulness training, or meditation.
Natural remedies for depression rarely work in isolation, however. The majority of sufferers find greatest relief from combining multiple depression treatments.
Ketamine infusion therapy is a relatively new (but highly effective) player in the quest to address mental illness. Up to 70% of those who have visited a ketamine clinic report extraordinary improvement, often after just one or two ketamine infusions. When ketamine infusion therapy is used in combination with other interventions—including CBT therapy or mindfulness training—robust and lasting improvement is often attained.
To learn more about how ketamine infusion therapy is opening new doors to treating depression, do not hesitate to contact us at Vitalitas Denver—a ketamine clinic staffed by a full suite of qualified and experienced medical professionals.
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