Talk therapy

I believe in combination therapy for the treatment of depression: combining medication therapy with psychotherapy. Depression is a vicious cycle of a biochemical imbalance and destructive or unproductive behavior/thought patterns. Many experts agree that psychotherapy is a powerful tool for helping depressed patients explore core thought processes and behaviors that can exacerbate the depression.

Medication is often necessary to overcome the chemical imbalances in depression. Managing psychological reactions to external triggers that occur through the day can only help with the recovery process. Even the most analytical individual may not always step back from the situation and look at what is happening objectively. I went through the phase of “if I were so smart, I can talk myself through it.” Then, I meet a mental “wall” in the face of an emotional or environmental trigger. Even as I consciously knew that I was repeating a pattern, I felt powerless to overcome the reactionary behavior. Psychotherapy helps trip my old behavioral wires so I can establish new, productive coping skills.

Cry. it’s good for you!I see the medication therapy as giving me a window of opportunity so that what I have learned from talk therapy can “sink in and take lasting effect”. Medication had gotten me out of bed to be functional (this is especially critical for severely depressed patients who could not imagine life beyond the next minute). Psychotherapy helped me gain insight into conditioned patterns of thinking. This helped me manage unproductive emotional reactions before I became overwhelmed.

Finally, it is helpful to look at therapy as Dr. Alan Siegel at Cambridge Hospital in Boston puts it: “It is hard to resolve depression without tears.”