Types of treatment for depression fall under two broad categories: psychosocial and pharmacological. Within each category are many choices. Psychosocial treatments include individual therapies, group therapies, vocational services, family/couples therapies, as well as others.
Furthermore, you will find various kinds of individual therapies, such as supportive, insight oriented, or cognitive-behavioral. There are also various amounts of treatment settings, which range from private practice settings, outpatient clinic settings, day treatment or partial hospital programs, and inpatient treatment.
Pharmacologic treatment requires the use of medications from various groups, for example antidepressants, anticonvulsants, antipsychotics, or anxiolytics. Psychotropics are those medicines that are primarily used in psychiatric care for the treatment of mental disorders, including depression.
However, there's normally a crossover use of medicines using their company medical specialties, for example from neurology, wherein antiseizure medications (anticonvulsants) are often found to possess efficacy in the treatment of many psychiatric conditions.
As part of an assessment, your clinician will think about the most suitable treatment arrange for your depression. For a mild depression, psychotherapy alone might be recommended first. For more severe depressions, both medication and therapy may be recommended. If already in psychotherapy, your therapist may refer you to a psychiatrist for a medication evaluation if you will find concerns about the level of response, the severity of symptoms, or confounding co-morbid conditions.
The type of therapy chosen depends on many factors such as cost, duration, or patient fit. Frequency of psychotherapy typically starts at once per week but might be more or more infrequently depending on your individual needs or therapy type.
As part of the treatment plan, the treatment setting must also be determined. Most individuals may be treatable in private office settings or outpatient clinic settings. Sometimes, a greater level of structure is needed in which more services could be provided, on a daily basis, such as in a day treatment program. If impairments are severe or if safety factors are in question, hospitalization might be warranted. Within the hospital, several modalities of treatment are provided every day, making the treatment more intense.
Treatments for depression work for all types, and typically, the particular kind of depression doesn't change the treatment approach drastically. It will, however, inform regarding certain patterns of reaction to treatments, as well regarding the degree of intervention that might be necessary. For example, an individual with major depression with psychotic features is more likely to require hospitalization than an individual with dysthymic disorder.
Some subtypes of depression have proof of better response to certain treatments. For example, an atypical depression has classically been considered more responsive to a particular medication class, known as the MAOIs. Depression with melancholic features may respond better to tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs). Seasonal depression responds better to a treatment called light box therapy.
The existence of bpd results in that a mood stabilizer will be a necessary part of the treatment, since the use of an antidepressant without a mood stabilizer in a bipolar individual puts the person in danger of the introduction of a manic episode.
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