Can depression be cured or only managed ?

[Heyo]

I don't know.

And neither do medical scientists. The jury's still out on this. The prevailing hypothesis is that depression is a physical condition that can be treated with anti-depressants. I.e. not cureable with known means.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Depression is a part of life , so thinking it can be cured or eliminated is foolish as it has the potential to make things worse , but the good news is that it can be normalized where it doesn't have a destructive impact once you become familiar with one's depression as it cycles with its natural rhythm once you realize depression for what it is.

 

[Massimo2002]

Depression is a part of life , so thinking it can be cured or eliminated is foolish as it has the potential to make things worse , but the good news is that it can be normalized where it doesn't have a destructive impact once you become familiar with one's depression as it cycles with its natural rhythm once you realize depression for what it is.

You are mixing up sadness which everyone expiernces with an actual mental and emotional illness called depression that only some people experience.

 

[Twilight Hue]

You are mixing up sadness which everyone expiernces with an actual mental and emotional illness called depression that only some people experience.

No. Everyone has the potential for depression. What I think you're trying to say is one's ability at resilience in face of the triggers that normally cause depression.

 

[RestlessSoul]

And neither do medical scientists. The jury's still out on this. The prevailing hypothesis is that depression is a physical condition that can be treated with anti-depressants. I.e. not cureable with known means.

And yet there is no biological test that can diagnose depression, or almost any other mental illness.

There is and always has been a school of thought among mental health professionals, that a significant factor in mental illness is always childhood trauma of some kind.

 

[Debater Slayer]

It depends on the cause of the depression, the person, and the person's circumstances and lifestyle.

Sometimes depression is rooted in external causes, like a stressful or abusive environment, and resolves when one has moved to a healthier environment. Sometimes it's hereditary and lifelong. Sometimes it's triggered by external causes but becomes lifelong. Some people are also more susceptible to depression than others, whether due to certain life experiences (e.g., trauma) or genes. One's diet, exercise or lack thereof, exposure to sunlight, and various other lifestyle factors can also affect the equation.

There's so much that science doesn't yet understand about the human brain and causes of mental illness that it can be impossible to tell what category one's depression falls in or whether it will permanently go away. I think it's best to just keep working as much as possible on getting professional help and managing or addressing the depression and, if applicable, its sources.

 

[Viker]

I don't know.

Short answer. It's possible that it can be cured. There are cases where it's been permanently wiped out. The best thing to keep in mind is management and treatment. Depression can go into extended periods of remission. I go for therapy, management and even lifestyle changes.

 

[Debater Slayer]

There is and always has been a school of thought among mental health professionals, that a significant factor in mental illness is always childhood trauma of some kind.

I'm not convinced by that school of thought, personally, because I have never had childhood trauma, for example, but my issue is partially genetic and partially environmental (outside anything to do with family or childhood). I know others who are similar, and most of the mental health professionals I have asked told me that someone with a healthy childhood could still have mental health issues for various reasons.

That said, I'm also aware that childhood trauma significantly affects many people's mental health and is a factor not just in their mental illnesses but also their outlook on life, struggles, interpersonal relationships, etc.

 

[Viker]

Probably depends on the degree of depression.

And the type of. Throw in stressors, anxiety, trauma, genetics and lifestyle and it can be exacerbated.

Depression seems to run through my mother's side of the family. Although people on my father's side aren't immune.

 

[SalixIncendium]

I don't find the question all that useful. In my experience, it's not as simple as that, as depression has numerous causes and factors that can impact the severity of the condition.

That said, one can certainly recover from depression and lead a healthy and fulfilling life, as there are treatment options out there ranging from therapy to medication to making changes to one's thought processes by adjusting behaviors, actions, and overall perspective.

 

[Mock Turtle]

From my own experience, and purely for me, I know that depression can be eliminated and without either medication or therapy, but this might not apply to others, and possibly what I experienced during such times might be regarded as being therapy. And as this occurred over a number of years, I put it down to a combination of circumstances, some of which were more or less coincidental.

 

[ChristineM]

I have been so depressed, along with othere issues i considered suicide as an exit.

Now that depression has completely gone, with the help if counseling, friends and family (no meds). To the extent i am currently in considerable pain but i know it won't last.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

can-depression-be-cured-or-only-managed

First, focus on the meaning of cure. Effective treatment can be broken down into cure, mitigation, and palliation.

A cure of an illness or condition in medicine means its complete and permanent removal. There are few areas where this is possible. Infectious diseases and surgery are two. It is at times possible to give a patient an antibiotic or an operation and restore them to their premorbid state of health. With cures, treatment is finite. The antibiotics are stopped, for example, and there is no relapse.

Nature, especially our immune systems and repair mechanisms, provides some natural cures. Somebody mentioned the cold virus and colds. These are generally self-cured, that is, after the cold, our health is indistinguishable from its premorbid state, but not because of any medical intervention.

Next is mitigating treatment, which slows or maybe even halts the progression of the disease but doesn't eliminate or eradicate it nor necessarily reverse damage that has already occurred. Treatment of conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholesterol fall into this category, and not necessarily with medications. Weight loss, diet, and exercise therapy may mitigate any or all of these and restore numbers to normal without other treatment, but the underlying disorder remains, and if there has already been some heart or kidney damage, it won't necessarily reverse itself even with good control of the numbers. If the patient relapses (returns to an unhealthy weight and/or lifestyle), the condition may return to its uncontrolled pretreatment status. It has not been cured.

Then there is palliation, which is therapy that reduces symptoms but doesn't affect the natural progression of the disease. Palliative treatment neither cures nor mitigates disease - just symptoms.

With that in mind, no, depression cannot be cured except naturally by the occasional spontaneous and permanent remission, but not by medical intervention. Depression - which comes in an assortment of subtypes such as reactive vs endogenous, major vs minor, unipolar vs bipolar, etc. - can often be mitigated with pharmacological and possibly psychotherapeutic interventions, at often disappears as mysteriously as it came whether for now or forever. If it is forever, we can say that the body cured itself. If depression is recurrent and episodic, then the underlying problem remains and is at best mitigated when it recurs.

Hope that helps. I've found it to be a useful conceptual framework.

 

[ChieftheCef]

Depression is all about logic. You think the world is **** because iof what you see, but you never venture far to what you do not see.

Take this: grass. Trees. Shrubs. Plantadge. If like me you understand that all things are a thing and they deserve respect, that they are consciousness the quantum field, then you realize how horrible being a shrub can be. They eat your leaves, leaving you relatively intact but only for so long. Lawns are especially horrible. But you have to realize, most grass doesn't feel anything. Otherwise we'd all be dead because everything would starve and there'd be no going back until evolution put us there. Yeah, do horrible people do horrible things? You made them that way with your bad attitude. And it's not most people. Most people don't die or we'd all be dead. Does everyone take a little extra when they charge you for that useless **** you chase after to not even give you happiness? Yeah, but it's so big. There's tons of goodness to keep the badness fertilizing goodness. Is it getting out of proportion, yes. But you being depressed means that your people power, which if you're more beneficial to other and thus are actually happy, is less and your absence means that people power barely even goes anywhere in the present moment.

Also two things that helped me: looking on the bright side/realizing dark is needed and this class: The Science of Well-Being

 

[wellwisher]

I don't know.

It can be cured without drugs. But it takes will and choice and some key knowledge of the unconscious mind. What often works is a change of environment. When you are depressed, your world increasely becomes depressing. But if you change that world, you will get fresh positive triggers, to distract from the cave of depression. This has to do with how the brain works.

When the brain writes to memory, emotional tags are added to the sensory content. This is useful for many reasons. For one, it allow you to use both sides of the brain when assessing your memory. The left brain is more for the sensory content details, while the feelings tag is more right brain. Depression keeps you in a linear feeling of depression, therefore you; ego, become more right brain and less able to reason from the left brain. You become more emotional all the time, but in a linear way. At the same time, since depression is a type of feeling tag, you unknowingly, reinforce your new memory writing; your world, with the depressed feeling tags. The real time memory is being rewritten in a self fulfilling way by the depression feeling tone and writing process.

The goal is to get yourself more into the left brain, to shift the feeling tone away from the just the linear depression feelings. A new place requires new adaptations, which keep you busy in your left brain; thinking, reasoning, exploring, sensory, etc.

I was chronically depressed when I was young, starting about age 10 to about 25, when I started to explore the unconscious mind and the collective unconscious. This was before the modern self help and drugs we have today. I cured myself with neither. I remember my depression was more seasonal. During the summer, I rarely felt depressed, due to the free time, outdoor activities with friends and family, cookouts, parties, the higher sensory load; bright sunlight, the smells of summer flowers, sounds of bird, sun on my tanned back, summer breeze on my skin, being in and under the water swimming, the bikinis, etc. It shifted my mind in a sensory way and that shifted my feelings. Come the fall and school, I would get bored, and would get depressed. Also I got more shut inside, due to the cold, with more clothes; no sun and breeze on my skin, less lighting, no more swimming, etc. The cave comes back and the depression; stuck in my head.

What may be compounding depression, in many people today, is the internet. The internet can locks you away; desensitized even in summer. It was when I started to explore my own brain, about age 25, that my depression became controllable, year round. This effort took away my depression because even depression was an interesting place to explore, when it comes to the brain and consciousness. I could be depressed and observe. That is the key skill; split your between both sides of the brain. The unconscious would use one side of the brain and me; ego, the other. I was half depressed and half amused and amazed. In the end, that in my head feeling, caused by depression, had trained me to work comfortably, exploring the unconscious mind, like I had been built for that pioneering work.

 

[Vinayaka]

Probably depends on the degree of depression.

I concur. I've seen many people move out of it, including me. Take grief, for example, from a loved one's leaving their body. Some people never get over it, some 3 months, others 2 weeks, and I suspect some get over it practically immediately. There are lots of approaches. In my view, chemicals should be the last one. Diet and exercise, changing the topic, finding new activities, are only a few of the recommendations. I also think that a counsellor can help you find the actual cause, as may people don't really know why they're sad.

 

[JustGeorge]

I concur. I've seen many people move out of it, including me. Take grief, for example, from a loved one's leaving their body. Some people never get over it, some 3 months, others 2 weeks, and I suspect some get over it practically immediately. There are lots of approaches. In my view, chemicals should be the last one. Diet and exercise, changing the topic, finding new activities, are only a few of the recommendations. I also think that a counsellor can help you find the actual cause, as may people don't really know why they're sad.

The therapist I had she saw so many people that had no idea they were depressed. They'd been that way for so long, they couldn't remember anything different.

 

[Alien826]

Here's an article that describes the various forms of depression. The whole subject is complicated and not easy to generalize about.

Types of Depression

There are many types of depression. They share some symptoms but affect people differently. WebMD explains various types of depression and their treatments.

www.webmd.com

I have recently had an episode of what the article calls "situational" depression or "reactive" as I've heard before. It's where something outside oneself causes the mood, my case the recent election. I'm coming out of it as the days go by. I find that's a normal pattern for reactive depression. It would be very different where the depressive factor/s go away totally. For example, if I were to be diagnosed with some nasty disease, but subsequent tests show the diagnosis to be false. In that case I cheer up right away.

 

[Vinayaka]

The therapist I had she saw so many people that had no idea they were depressed. They'd been that way for so long, they couldn't remember anything different.

Yes, I've seen that. Sometimes they are in denial, much like an alcoholic would be. It's more difficult to help, in those situations. There is also some false thinking about depression .... assuming it deeper than it really is, or assuming that non-social people are depressed when they're actually not. I'm a natural smiler, and some days when I wasn't smiling, colleagues assumed the worst.

 

[JustGeorge]

Yes, I've seen that. Sometimes they are in denial, much like an alcoholic would be. It's more difficult to help, in those situations. There is also some false thinking about depression .... assuming it deeper than it really is, or assuming that non-social people are depressed when they're actually not. I'm a natural smiler, and some days when I wasn't smiling, colleagues assumed the worst.

Do you think some of the denial is the stigma attached?