Multimodal Therapy for Depression
You know you may be depressed when it is a struggle for you to get up in the morning. You don’t want to face the long day because you feel you have nothing meaningful to look forward to doing. Frequently, nighttime is a welcome part of your day because the day is over, and you do not need an excuse to rest.
Depression is your mind, body and spirit telling you that they are depleted. If you have been running on empty for a while, you have less and less energy and drive. Nothing seems to excite you anymore. Everything appears dull or gray. This affects your thinking patterns. Your thinking becomes more limited – you are just not as sharp as you once were. Furthermore, when you are depressed, you tend to judge yourself negatively. If this continues and you do not get competent help, you continue to sink further down into a state where life seems to have lost its meaning.
When you are depressed, you may find that you have trouble falling asleep, or you wake up frequently throughout the night, or you wake up very early in the morning, and you wake up unrested. As a result, you have less energy to run on during the day. Maybe you feel tired all the time. When depression that is untreated worsens, you may want to stay in bed all day. You just do not feel motivated to do anything.
Current psychiatric research on the effective treatment of depression indicates that clinical depression needs to be treated with therapy that is multimodal – that is, therapy that integrates medical, psychological, behavioral, and spiritual components. While antidepressant medication may be indicated as one component in the treatment of your depression, medicine alone cannot help you address the underlying issues that led to your depletion. A multimodal clinical depression treatment program should incorporate the following components:
· Behavioral therapy to guide you in restructuring your daily schedule to find meaningful activities that bring you pleasure and a sense of achievement.
· Affective or emotionally focused therapy to help you become aware of your feelings, to accept them, and to put your feelings into words in a safe accepting space with your therapist. Emotionally focused therapy can help you address and alleviate the painful feelings with which you have been living.
· Somatically focused therapy to address your body’s numbness, lack of feeling, or sensory overload. This would include relaxation training, body awareness training, breathing exercises, and other techniques.
· Imagery focused therapy to help you adjust your negative self-image thinking and transform intrusive negative images in your depressed “mind’s eye” and brain.
· Cognitive therapy to help you adjust your negative thinking patterns and self-defeating beliefs.
· Interpersonal therapy to help you recover a valid sense of self-worth and meaning in your life through interpersonal relationships.
· Biological therapy through the judicious prescription of medications, and appropriate and reasonable adjustments in diet and physical exercise.
The above seven types of interventions spell B.A.S.I.C. I.B. If you change the “B” in Biological to “D” for Drug, we have the acronym “B.A.S.I.C. I.D. If you would like to learn more about Multimodal Therapy for Depression, contact us at Delray Beach Psychiatry. We have caring and compassionate depression therapists on staff that include a licensed Ph.D. clinical psychologist, licensed clinical social workers and licensed mental health counselors with the training and experience to help you recover from your depression.
Treatment for depression at Delray Beach Psychiatry can focus on may different types of therapy perfectly selected for that individual and their unique needs. This may also include a recommendation for medication to promote optimal treatment