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Psychotherapy coupled with antidepressants can be an effective treatment for those who are very depressed. A person is classified as being depressed if he/she experiences profound feelings of sadness and despair for weeks or months, which result in problems in thinking, produce physical problems and impacts life, activities and relationships. It has been said that it is the West’s second most disabling disease.

Depression has many causes. This can happen as a result of extended drug abuse or it can be triggered after a specific incident like having a loved one die, suffering a heart attack or being diagnosed with a terminal illness. But probably the most interesting thing about depression is that it can be inherited, as it happens quite frequently to several members within a family. It is commonly accepted that the cause of depression is the brain chemicals that control mood, called neurotransmitters, going out of balance.

Depression has two standard treatments. Psychotherapy is one of these remedies, a psychological method created to develop an understanding of issues and change the way people feel about them, and react to them in relation to people. Biomedical therapy, generally using antidepressants, has overtaken psychotherapy as the number one treatment for depression. The newer forms of medicine include some serotonin reuptake inhibitors like Zoloft, Paxil and Prozac and other drugs, such as Wellbutrin and Effexor, that work on a different or a combination of neurotransmitters.

There are tons of jokes about these medications. Although many people believe that the role of antidepressants is to change a severely depressed individual into a carefree person who is outgoing, productive or self-confident, in reality they function to relieve the symptoms of depression, enabling a person to function normally again.

In common with the majority of medicines, antidepressants do have some unwanted side effects, for example anxiety, insomnia, a decrease in appetite and libido, and headaches. In spite of the unwanted side effects, the fact that antidepressants generally work very well has made them a popular treatment choice. Prozac is taken by five million people in America, and twenty million worldwide. A recent experiment with 159 people explained in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggested that taking Zoloft as a long term treatment stops chronic severe depression from returning.

Some issues have been raised about the fact that psychotherapy, which can be successful in treating depressed patients, is on the decline. A current study of 600 patients who suffered from major depression determined that psychotherapy combined with a drug regimen was proven to be the optimum treatment plan.

Antidepressants can be helpful in treating depression, provided the patient follows the doctor’s instructions and also engages in psychotherapy. There can be negative side effects, but the good results have been shown to outweigh the negatives.