Holistic Healing for Anxiety, Depression, and Cognitive Decline by Cortright Brant

Author:Cortright, Brant [Cortright, Brant]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Psyche Media
Published: 2020-10-18T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

Holistic Healing for Depression

Depression causes immense pain around the world. The number of people diagnosed with depression has increased by five to eight times in the last fifty years. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), depression is now the leading cause of disability and ill health worldwide, with over 300 million people suffering. 1

According to Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS), it has spiked by 33% in just the past five years (2013–2018), across all age and gender groups. Since most of those who are depressed also battle other conditions such as anxiety, chronic illness, or substance abuse, BCSC ranks depression behind high blood pressure as “the second most impactful condition on the overall health of ... Americans.” 2 A 2017 Harris survey found two out of three Americans are not happy.

America is following the worldwide trend, as people who are depressed live an average of 9.6 years less, and the chief medical officer for BCBS predicts that “by 2030 depression will be the No. 1 cause for loss of longevity of life.” 2 The young are especially vulnerable. Between 2013 and 2018 depression has gone up 65% for adolescent girls, 47% for adolescent boys, and 47% among millennials.

What Is Depression?

Many people confuse occasional sadness or unhappiness with depression. Contrary to the images projected by modern media that there’s something wrong if you don’t feel happy all the time, feeling sad sometimes is a normal part of life. But depression is well beyond this, an almost unbearably painful, extended dark mood that continues for months or years.

On the inside, feeling depressed is a continuum. On the mild end depression is a prolonged, severe mood of feeling despondent, down, and despairing. As depression intensifies it moves into feeling worthless, hopeless, with difficulty concentrating and loss of pleasure in activities (anhedonia). It affects sleep and eating (vegetative functions), so the person sleeps either more or less and eats either more or less. There may be thoughts of suicide or death. As depression worsens it gets progressively bleaker, darker, more isolating and painful. Toward the more severe end it descends into complete darkness, utter futility, and loss of motivation. It becomes hard to move or get out of bed. At the far end it becomes deadness and complete numbness.

From the outside, while “depression” is often used as a catch-all to include any type of not feeling well, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 5th Edition (DSM-V) identifies numerous types of depression. A depressed mood or loss of interest or pleasure must be present for at least two weeks.

Diagnosis is based on how a person feels and behaves. There is no blood test or brain scan to diagnose depression. For this reason, it’s always advisable to get a complete medical checkup to rule out any illness that may be presenting as depression. For example, low thyroid or chronic fatigue syndrome can look identical to depression.

Types of depression include:

• major depressive disorder

• persistent depressive disorder (dysthymia)

• adjustment disorder with depressed mood

• seasonal affective disorder (SAD),

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