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By David Richards
When a person is suffering from the severe disease called chronic depression, most likely he or she may need to be prescribed depression medication as soon as possible. If you have experienced any of the classical symptoms of depression, persisting for more than a month, you may need to visit your physician without fail. You can help yourself and your doctor in his or her diagnosis work, by providing as much details as possible about your problems of depression. Always keep in mind that if your problem is severe enough to demand extra help, you will need to take a family member or friend along on your first visit, to see that you are helped in a proper way.
A good and proven way to find the right treatment or medication against your depression consists of
- a correct analysis of your previous clinical history,
- a precise overview of the current status of the disease
- a right diagnosis.
The first obvious step on your part, should normally be to provide every bit of information about your problem; your previous medical history, physical tests, and preliminary laboratory tests can assist your doctor know a lot, if a general medical problem is the real cause of your malady.
Most cases of depressions are caused by a general medical illness or medicines associated with those diseases. As soon as these conditions are identified and treated, the depression will usually disappear by itself.
Unfortunately, depression medication is simply not possible without your active cooperation and help; you should never hide anything from your doctor.
Based on the intensity or severity of the disease condition, depression medication is for practical reasons classified in three main categories:
1. Emergency or acute medication
2. Continuation or long term medication.
3. Maintenance medication
The medicines against depression which have been and improved tremendously the recent years, are used to treat any one of the three main levels of depression symptoms:
- severe or major depression
- moderate depression and
- mild or minor depression
For each group of symptoms, most treatment methods or schools prescribe certain methods of treatment where medication plays an important role. This approach works better and an increased clinical efficiency has also been documented.
The main purpose of acute or immediate medication is to systematically take off the severe symptoms of depression until you feel well or better. Continuation medication means to continue the treatment on a more long term basis even after you feel fine. This is critical because it avoids the recurrence of depression after some time.
The third kind of medication is for patients who experience one or more episodes of recurrent depression. This medication is also known as "maintenance medication" and it's purpose is to maintain depression treatment over a longer period of time to prevent recurrence .
There are many types of depression medication methods and combinations like
- antidepressant medicine (Happy pills)
- antidepressant medicine combined with other psychopharmaca
- antidepressant medicine combined with psychotherapy etc..
Be aware that medication for depression does not work instantly. As a matter of fact, it works pretty slowly and gradually over a period of several months. However, with the correct medicine, most affected people will obtain good results within a month. If we compare with psychotherapy alone, medical treatment is significantly faster.
A significant criteria for a successful treatment of depression is the same as for many other diseases: the earlier it is detected the better chances for healing. Another important success parameter is correct medication - and this depends on a correct diagnosis. Depression should be treated properly no matter what it cost once it has been detected and diagnosed. This is the best way to prevent relapse, which in most cases mean increased severity and intensity.
David Richards is a writer and internet publisher who likes to publish info that can help people with chronic depression as well as mental health issues in general. Read more at Depression.
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