What should patients with severe depression do besides taking medication?
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What else do patients with severe depression need to do besides taking medication?
What should patients with severe depression do besides taking medication? Patients with severe depression need to be treated with a variety of antidepressants as soon as possible to relieve their pain. In addition to drug treatment, patients also need to undergo psychological and physical treatments.
Depression is a common mental disorder, and its prevalence and clinical cure rate are high. However, due to the lack of understanding of the disease by many people, fewer patients receive timely and effective treatment, and therefore fewer people receive treatment. The recurrence rate is high.
If this disease is not treated in time, it will cause very serious consequences and cause great pain to the patient. So how should the disease be treated?
The main treatment for this disease is medication, but individual patients vary greatly, so the specific conditions of medication are also different. Patients should choose suitable drugs for treatment under the guidance of their doctors.
Generally, the drugs used to treat this disease are sertraline, paroxetine, fluoxetine, citalopram, doloxetine, mirtazapine, bupropion and so on. Although these drugs can relieve and control the disease to a certain extent, they have many side effects.
In addition, this kind of treatment can be divided into three periods: acute phase, consolidation phase, and maintenance phase. In different periods, the purpose of drug treatment is different from the course of treatment.
Among them, the main purpose of treatment of the disease in the acute phase is to control the symptoms and try to make the patient achieve clinical cure. After using antidepressants, they usually start to work within 2 to 4 weeks.
If the medication is ineffective for 6 to 8 weeks, the patient can be treated with another drug of the same type or another drug with a different mechanism of action.
The purpose of treatment in the consolidation phase is to prevent the patient from recurring symptoms due to premature withdrawal or reduction of the dosage after the symptoms are partially relieved in the acute phase. Patients in this period are in unstable condition and have a greater risk of recurrence. They need to continue treatment for at least 4 to 6 months, and it is also necessary to emphasize the treatment plan, the dose of medication, and the method used in the acute phase.
The purpose of treatment in the maintenance period is to reduce the risk of recurrence. For adolescents with onset, psychotic symptoms, serious illness, family genetic history, or a greater risk of spontaneous killing, the duration of maintenance treatment should be at least 2 to 3 years. Patients with multiple relapses should advocate long-term maintenance treatment. After the maintenance treatment is over and the condition is stable, the dosage can be gradually reduced until the treatment is terminated.
In addition to drug treatment, patients have to be treated by psychological and physical methods. Psychotherapy is a method of treatment through talking and communicating with doctors. This method is based on the specific problems of patients, and can be divided into supportiveness, cognitive behavior, interpersonal psychology, psychodynamics, marriage and family and other aspects.
This method can be carried out at the same time as drugs, and the effect of mild to moderate depression is similar to that of antidepressants. In the clinic, physical therapy is mainly combined with MECT and repeated transcranial stimulation for adjuvant therapy. Among them, the former can cure and treat the disease quickly and effectively, and can significantly reduce the probability of suicide death.
It can be seen from the above that patients with severe depression need to be treated with a variety of antidepressant drugs as soon as possible to relieve their pain. In addition to drug treatment, patients also need to undergo psychological and physical treatments.
After treatment, the patient also needs to pay attention to the usual self-regulation, through various methods such as moderate exercise, listening to music, communicating with others, reading, writing and other methods to divert attention, relax and help recover from the illness.
(source:internet, reference only)
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