Natural Treatment for Anxiety and Depression; My Trial Treatment

When seeking treatment for any given medical condition, depression and anxiety included; I am quite sure many of us have gone through various medical treatment options before finding success. My daughter has been through a minimum of four different prescription changes alone. At best she has stabilized, but has yet to recover. In a world where prescriptions are as numerous as the people who are being treated with them, what we have concluded is not every treatment works best for everybody. At every turn in the road someone seems to have an opinion about what they seem to believe works. What I have noticed works well is a variable of treatment options that can be combined to achieve optimum results. In a recent publication of our local Sunday paper, I happened to stumble upon an article regarding treatment for depression in pregnant women. The article concluded that no treatment at all, had an over all more devastating affect, than risks posed to an unborn fetus provided mother is closely monitored while taking prescribed treatment. Careful consideration is given, with regard to cases of devastating and recurring depression and suicidal thoughts. The guidelines also stress the importance of psychotherapy and emphasize that psychotherapy may be best and should be offered. Psychotherapy will be helpful in cases in which psychological factors like skewed thought patterns are identified to have caused depression. In such cases, psychotherapy or counseling will work better if there is good understanding and a solid rapport between the counselor and the patient. Depending on the severity of the disorder, long and frequent counseling sessions may be necessary due to the patient’s distorted thought patterns. Thought patterns, personal relationships, and low self-esteem must be corrected; giving particular attention to the level of self-love, additionally, stress has to be lowered or eliminated. The most important thing is the method of approach the counselor brings, as well as, the counselor-patient relationship.
Rehabilitation of individuals with various types of mental illness is a family and social responsibility. Attempts to treat mental illness by drugs alone will not be successful. For this reason, the stigma that is associated with mental illnesses has to be discarded. Loved ones must not discriminate against people with mental illness because this can make the problem worse. Love and support is the best way to start looking toward a cure. Research and treatment have made tremendous strides over the past decades, in light of previously used primitive treatment methods. However, I do not know anyone who has been through the long and difficult road back to health, personally or with a loved one, that does not believe that we still have a miles to go. As our family has endured numerous personal challenges of the most extreme, compounded with the demand of our daughters mental illness; I have personally battled with varying degrees of anxiety from mild to more severe. While I do not share my daughters' same mental illness struggles, anxiety is not a frivolous matter. It has caused me many a sleepless night with the only end result being complete exhaustion the next day. My symptoms have differed from shortness of breath, nausea, headaches, tension , and irritability. At the advice of my family doctor, who herself had positive results with Zoloft during pregnancy, I tried anti-anxiety medication on two consecutive occasions. I took Zoloft for a total of eight weeks with no success. I returned to the physician suffering from the same effects only to be recommended to Cymbalta which I proceed to take for another four weeks. Cymbalta conceded to be more harsh than the previous medication. My experience with anti-anxiety medication concluded that, for me, the side effects of the medication were worse than the actual anxiety and made no difference in my anxiety symptoms. My side effects varied from severe headaches, dizziness, indigestion, and fatigue, among others. My best results were achieved with meditation, breathing exercises and relaxation music. I am beginning a new alternative treatment program to help with my anxiety symptoms, I will keep you all posted over the next couple of weeks in regard to my degree of success. If anyone has had success or failure with either medication or any additional treatment please leave feed-back with blog. We are looking for feed-back on any type of mental illness. God bless you and may you have the best of luck in your medical seekings.