Overcoming Depression: Importance of Support Groups and Online Help

Depression is generally acknowledged to be a personality disorder. Although not everyone in the health sector may agree about the fine points – what its symptoms are, how it can be diagnosed and how best it can be treated – everyone agrees that it’s one of the most debilitating personality disorders around.

People with depression are so consumed by grief, despair, hopelessness, and all other negative feelings that they become truly incapacitated. They cannot do all the things that they have been able to do with ease before; in fact they won’t even want to try. They lose interest in their physical appearance, in other people’s company, in eating, in working, and all other things. In short, they cannot function.

Therefore, even if the matter of depression’s causes, onset and symptoms is far from settled, two things remain very clear: depression can eventually kill (either through suicide or through physical degeneration resulting from the individual’s inability to function and accomplish activities of daily living), and people who are suffering from depression cannot be left untreated.

Get Treatment for Depression

There are two main methods of treating depression. The first one is medication. It has been found out in studies that depression is related to inadequate levels of certain neurotransmitters. Antidepressants are medications that can alleviate this condition. For instance, if the serotonin levels in the brain are low and are causing a patient to feel down, some antidepressants will block the receptors that reabsorb serotonin. Serotonin, after it has facilitated the signal transfer between neurons is typically reabsorbed by the neuron that released it in the first place. By preventing reabsorption, the serotonin stays in the synapse (the junction between two adjacent neurons). While the medication is in use, every serotonin release adds to the existing level of serotonin in the synapse and this alleviates the effect of reduced serotonin levels, specifically the symptoms of depression.

The second treatment method is psychotherapy. In this case, the therapist talks the patient through his feelings, his thoughts and his perceptions. The therapist sifts through the information that he gains from these sessions (including those he spends with the patient’s family) and is able to see the patterns of depression – when it is triggered, by what it is triggered, how depression develops in the patient, and what being depressed makes the patient feels. Psychotherapists are trained professionals who are able to help their patients develop coping mechanisms against depression and, overall, help reduce the frequency of depression episodes and help prevent their recurrence.

Joining a Support Group: Crucial Coping Strategy

A support group does exactly what it says – it provides support for people who are suffering from depression, people who are trying to recover from depression and people who have already recovered from depression. Support groups provide people with depression disorder a very valuable service: they provide peer acceptance.

People who are suffering from depression do not only have to cope with their feelings of melancholy or despair and their inability to function normally. They also have to cope with the lack of understanding – sometimes by their friends and family – and by with the social stigma that is commonly attached to personality disorders in general and depression disorders in particular.

Their friends and family might want to help, but such good intentions are useless when unaccompanied by full understanding. Their spouses, friends and children may think can act cheerful, encouraging and positive. However, this usually does not work because, to the suffering party, it may only seem insincere and forced. In some cases, family members’ and friends’ efforts to cheer a depressed person up can only make him feel more frustrated and guilty because he still can’t do what he knows his friends and family wants him to do: get all better and bring things back to normal.

Society also has a rather harsh view about depression disorders. Some will probably say, “Everybody has problems. If I and billions of other people can cope with our problems, why can’t you? If you are feeling miserable, it’s your fault for letting yourself feel miserable.” This social stigma makes people with depression reluctant to talk about their feelings and discuss their condition in the fear that they will be judged instead of understood and will receive ridicule instead of assistance.

Talking with psychotherapists is great. Understanding is there, all right. However, the experience is akin to having a complete physical; one lays himself bare to his doctor, and the doctor checks him up because that is his job.

Support groups provide people who are afflicted with depression disorder an entirely different experience. In support groups, people who have depression are liberated from their enforced silence and are free to be themselves. They can express their feelings without fear of judgment or rejection. They can be with people who do not expect anything from them. They feel a sense of belonging. The members of the support groups are people who are going through or have undergone the same thing. Thus, when these members tell someone they understand – they speak only the truth and nothing but.

Support groups, practically speaking, are very effective at motivating and affirming people with depression disorder. By listening to other people speak about their own conditions, someone can learn from others’ experiences. He can pick up good coping methods from others, and he can start applying them to his own life. He will feel inspired by other people’s success stories. The tiniest little step towards recovery is noted in support groups, moreover, because the members know exactly how hard it is to overcome depression.

Get Online Depression Support

Support groups for people with depression disorder can be found online. These also function like the traditional support group. The members are typically people who have “been there, done that.” The motivation and affirmation is also available. However, interaction among the members is done online.

However, support groups online have something that offline support groups do not have – anonymity. Thus, those who are not very comfortable about sharing their life experiences with others will find the anonymity of online support groups to be their biggest draw. One can, after all, open up more with someone whom he knows he will probably not meet in real life.