feeling depressed/down

[Janine Ward]

Visit your gp or go to the www.iapt.nhs.uk site to look at the difference symptoms of depression and services specifically designed the one in four people that are just like you.

It is suggested that if you are having symptoms more often that not in two weeks that you may have problems with low mood and depression. Often little things can trigger the moods off and often symptoms include:
Feeling down depressed or hopeless
Trouble falling or staying asleep, sleeping too much or too little.
Having little interest in things or pleasure in things
Appetite changes either eating too much or too little
Feeling like your a failure or guilty
Being slow in your speech and movement or agitated
Suicidal thoughts or self harm thoughts
Problems with concentration

There is lots of help out there for you which can range from interventions that simply help manage he symptoms for example helping you to do more, exercise, getting quality sleep, diet and responding to unhelpful thoughts differently to more intensive therapy where you may go into much deeper thought processes.

Not all low mood requires medication, mild symptoms can be dealt with through the above mentioned but those that are more severe may be helped by an antidepressant medication. It's best to talk through with your gp or if you have an employment welfare line/ advice service they can often point you in the right direction or provide advice.

[karenacoyle]

Hi
Janine has given you some suggestions on how to determine if your symptoms can be helped by self-help exercises or if you may need further intervention by your GP or mental health professionals.

I would also like to add that it may be helpful to keep a record of when your mood is low so that you may be better able to identify triggers.
For example your drop in mood may be triggered by an encounter at work, in a particular social situation, in your relationship, a change in the weather such as in Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Seasonal-a ... ction.aspx or if you are female; PMS http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/premenstru ... ction.aspx or hormonal changes related to childbirth or the menopause .

If you can identify what may cause your drop in mood, it may help you to decide what is the best course of action to help resolve your symptoms.
You may find the following NHS link helpful in reviewing how serious your symptoms are and what type of support may be beneficial:http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stress-anx ... ssion.aspx.

If you decide that you need more than self-help measures to resolve your low mood, if you have a written record of the symptoms, and when they are most prominent, it may be helpful to your GP as well as ensuring that you don't forget anything important to make the most from your appointment with your GP.

It can also help to bring along a trusted friend or family member to support you and to be able to remind you of any information or advice given by your GP.

I hope this helps and that you are able to get the help you need to improve your mood.

Best wishes

[Adam Eason]

Hello there,

In addition to the great suggestions already given here, there are a couple of other practical processes you could look at.

If you did engage in some self-monitoring as has been suggested, you might also like to 'pan for gold' in the same journal/diary at the end of each day. This is whereby you'll make a written note of all the things in the day that made you feel good about yourself or your life. What it'll help you do is to focus upon the elements of your life that help raise your spirits and ideally also show you how good life is and how to celebrate aspects of our day that we sometimes overlook.

There is evidence to suggest that cognitive behavioural processes can help put you more in control of your mood. A good starting point to explore and employ these types of methodologies would be the book 'Feeling Good' by David Burns and/or 'Learned Optimism' by Martin Seligman.

Both require your active engagement in the process, if you feel you need some additional assistance from others, then mental health charity MIND offer local support groups and your GP may be able to recommend local professionals to help you with additional resources, local groups to attend or even one-to-one therapy should it be required or deemed necessary.

A good body of evidence also shows that the efficacy of cognitive behavioural therapy is often advanced with the use of clinical hypnosis and a good therapist would always teach you self-hypnosis in addition to the coping skills learned in therapy for mood elevation. However, you can learn self-hypnosis via good quality tuition or books that adhere to research and not myth. (Additionally, I have written numerous blog entries on this TalkHealth website that have great protocols for learning self-hypnosis, do have a search)

Importantly, what all of these approaches are likely to help you with, is what is referred to as 'self-efficacy' - this is whereby you feel capable of taking control of your own well-being. Employing some active strategies, techniques or learning new skills to help be in control of your moods rather than feeling like a passive recipient to them will give you the belief that will fuel your moods going forward and help you to effectively deal with any relapses in the future.

If you'd like further reading or resources on this subject, do feel free to contact me directly or request it here and I'll gladly share more. Most importantly, I wish you the very best going forward and finding a solution.

As an adjunct, you might like to read a couple of my former entries here in this clinic and apply some of the basic tenets from those too:

viewtopic.php?f=688&t=6887

And here

viewtopic.php?f=688&t=6859