Treatment of Teenage Depression
When you’re suffering from teenage depression, you should not worry about you having this for a lifetime since depression is highly treatable. First, you have to understand the cause of your depression. Is this because of the divorce of your parents, the death of a loved one, or new adjustments you have to make? Recognizing and understanding what caused your depression is the first step you have to make for your condition to be treated.
The treatment for teenage depression would depend on a lot of factors – the severity of the symptoms, the availability of support, and the availability of financial resources. Before a doctor prescribes you treatment, these things are to be considered first. You cannot leave this untreated for this will be recurrent if you do so.
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy includes different techniques in treating teenage depression. Here, counseling is done not only to the depressed teen but to the family and the significant others as well. You will be encouraged to talk with each other, and open up on the problems that you have been encountering. Some methods of psychotherapy are:
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. This involves treatment of depression basing on how through processes work. Depressed people are more inclined towards pessimism, and cognitive therapy aims to try to divert this and make you be more optimistic. Reports suggest that this therapy is very effective and has shown that people undergoing this would be less likely to go back to their depressed states.
- Interpersonal Therapy. This is a short term therapy, lasting to only 15-20 sessions, with each session lasting for an hour. This aims to help you recognize and understand the main cause of your depression.
- Other Psychotherapy Treatments. Other effective psychotherapy methods in the treatment of teenage depression are psychodynamic therapy and group therapy. These therapies include trauma or conflicts encountered during childhood. You will then be asked to interact with other people in your group wherein you share your experiences and ideas on how to deal with the depression that you are having.
Medication Therapy
When psychotherapy is not effective, a physician would then prescribe medications to alleviate the symptoms experienced by a depressed teenager. Antidepressants, as these medicines are called, are prescribed to relieve the symptoms. Some common medications used are fluoxetine (Prozac) and sertraline (Zoloft). These are FDA approved for teenagers since they have little side effects.
Three Approaches to Treatment of Depression
The first approach is through the use of antidepressant medications such as those that were mentioned above. These are to be prescribed by the physician and should not be bought over-the-counter. The dosage and frequency in taking these medications are to be regulated to minimize the occurrence of side effects.
Another approach is treatment through psychotherapy. It may either be cognitive behavioral therapy, interpersonal therapy, or any other psychotherapy method. This is mostly applicable for cases of mild depression but may not be as effective when used with moderate and severe depression.
The last approach is called combination therapy. Medication and psychotherapy are combined to ensure effectiveness of the treatment methods. Research studies have found out that this is the most effective type of therapy and is the one that is mostly being employed by physicians.
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