The Truth about Depression

Beating depression, as you might expect, means understanding depression. No depression treatment program can be effective if its patients don’t know what they’re up against, and self-education is a key part of the depression recovery process. The most important lesson: Depression is a disease, and like all diseases it has clinical roots that can only be eradicated via clinical treatment.

But what does that mean, in a practical sense?: “Depression is a disease.” On the most fundamental level, it means that depression is not a function of will, or personal weakness; it is not something that patients in any sense “choose” to suffer from, and not something that patients can simply “choose” to overcome. That said, many people make the mistake of assuming otherwise: of assuming that depression victims somehow decide to be depressed, and that the ultimate solution to depression itself lies in patients simply deciding to be happy. Depression treatment, in the popular imagination, is no more complicated than simply resolving to smile.

Cliffside Malibu Rehabilitation Of course, such thinking isn’t even close to accurate, but it does speak to an important fact about depression and depression treatment: You’ll never beat what you don’t understand. People who misconstrue the scope and mechanisms of depression do so, simply, because they don’t know the facts about the disease, and their ignorance suggests the instrumental importance of education in the depression treatment process. Again, getting better means understanding what you’re up against. Depression treatment, if it’s going to work, has got to be grounded in a firm understanding of the truth.

And what of that truth? It’s important to note here that depression treatment is a jointly physical and psychological disease, one that results both from chemical imbalances in the human brain and from self-critical cognitive process which spring from and help sustain the imbalances themselves. In practice, those physical and psychological causes are inextricably bound up with one another, and so it is that successful depression treatment does and must address the disease in all its forms. If you or someone you love is suffering from depression, nothing less could ever be good enough.
(Article courtesy of Cliffside Malibu)