Depression Days

There are millions of people in America suffer from depression. There are also millions of America suffer from some form or another of anxiety. Usually the two disorders coexist.  There are between 60 and 70% of all those millions that suffer from both anxiety and depression.

At least half of the people that are diagnosed with anxiety also suffer from depression. These two overlap so often that more and more psychologists and scientists see these two as aspects of the same illness.

Let face it there are many people who feel sad at one point or another in their lives. A loss of a job, death in the family or various other disappointments will cause a lot of the symptoms of depression. At the same time, most people experience the above at some point of their life when stressful situations are brought to life. These are normal feelings to a certain point.

When these feelings of tremendous sadness or hopelessness are accompanies with fatigue and changes in appetite and sleep patterns are when these are not normal. In addition, if these feelings continue for more than a few weeks you can be diagnosed with clinical depression. In the same aspect when the feelings of anxiety become out of control to the stress factor the person is feeling. In addition, if the person has many panic attacks over a certain number of weeks they could be suffering from anxiety disorder. These two types are so tangled that one type must be diagnosed and treated before a person is able to deal with another.

Because of the overlap of depression and anxiety there will also be quite of bit of overlap in the treatment. The anxiety disorder side is most often treated with different types of antidepressant medications. However, some forms of psychotherapy especially therapy that deals with cognitive and behavioral therapy has been very positive in treating both conditions.

At times though it is necessary to treat the depression first. In one type of therapy, exposure therapy, the patient will be exposed to stresses that are gradually increased to help them to be able to cope with the anxiety. Depression has been known to drain a person of energy which leaves which leaves them to unable to cooperate so usually the depression needs to be dealt with before the anxiety therapy to work.

Psychologists are in agreement that a combination of anxiety and depression causes more debilitation than just having anxiety or depression.  Patients who have both disorders take longer time wise to resolve issues relating to depression.  This makes treatment in these patients harder.  Research also shows that the suicide rate is much higher in patients suffering from both depression and anxiety.

Although this may sound bad, there are several options to treat each of these conditions.  Anti-depressants can treat both anxiety and depression.  When behavioral therapy is used along with these medications, a high rate of success is found in treating anxiety that is accompanied by depression.

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