Diagnosis and Treatment - Assignment Example

Diagnosis and Treatment Introduction: There are different categories of psychological disorders that include mood, anxiety, dissociative, eating, sleeping, somatoform, personality, adjustment and related other disorders. Mood disorders are particularly associated with the disturbances occurring in the mood of an individual. This in turn affects the emotional condition of the person. One of the common mood disorders include depression that creates sadness in the individual reflected through disturbed symptoms in the individual (Psychological Disorders, pp.490-492). The present study focuses on the mood disorder of depression and makes a study on its nature, its current trend of diagnosis, and treatment available for the disorder.

Mood Disorder: Depression: Depression is a mood disorder the symptoms of which reflect sadness in the individual, and the individual loses his interest in performing any or all activities. Moreover, the patients tend to suffer from a feeling of guilt and worthlessness. They become incapable of making decisions and are unhappy even at things that earlier used to make them happy. The disorder makes the patients feel as if they are failures and they consider themselves to be responsible for all the negative aspects of their lives.

People suffering from depression might be incapable of doing even the little things efficiently and lose interest even in eating or reading, among other activities. Also, short term memory losses may be one of the symptoms of the depression disorder. It is not only the adults but children and adolescents might also suffer from depression. The symptoms in such cases may be slightly different from those of the adults, the effect of the disorder being more on the physical health than on the emotional condition of the individual.

However, there is essential difference between the clinical depression and the normal depression that might occur as a result of a normal sorrowful incident in everyday’s life. The understanding of this difference is essential in order to determine the suitable ways of treating the disorder (Psychological Disorders, pp.492-493). The Current Trend in Diagnosis of Depression Disorder: As a recent trend developed in the diagnosis of psychological disorders like depression, telehealth is considered as an advanced way of making out ways for understanding the difficulties of the patients and focus on a suitable treatment.

Telehealth makes use of the telephone, or internet technology and connects to the depressed person on-line for counseling. Since depressed people often would wish not to come in front of the person treating them, the on-line measures can prove to be of benefits in this respect. As a means of the other diagnosis and treatment measures, several psychotherapies are utilized in the present times. Such therapies that include family therapies, self help therapies and others have been found to be significantly effective in the improvement of the conditions of people suffering from psychological disorders like depression.

There is no particular therapy for the particular disease. Rather, it has been found that all the therapies are meant to explain the difficulties and help to improve the mental state of the patient. Thus the use of any one of them proves to be beneficial (Psychological Disorders, pp.532-543). Treatment of Depression: As have been mentioned above, the different psychotherapies are available for the appropriate diagnosis and the determination of treatment suitable for the depressed individual. Medication is the most common measure of treating psychological disorders including depressions.

Prozac is a drug that is very common and popular in the treatment of depression. In the recent times, there has been a significant development in the production and use of drugs that produce effective results in the process of treatment of depression. Antidepressant drugs are particularly referred to the group of drugs targeted towards the treatment of individuals suffering from depression. The antidepressant drugs also have the capability to improve the conditions of anxiety, or other mental disturbances that are associated with the depression.

The treatment of bipolar disorder, or what is referred as the manic depression, is done with the use of lithium carbonate that contains natural salt and helps in the control of mood. Its effect occurs slowly but creates significant improvement in the depressed patient. There are several other medications available for the treatment that include Psychostimulants increasing the level of awareness and are significantly applicable in the treatments in children. Combination of drugs and psychotherapies is considered as a better method of treating the psychological disorders.

For the treatment of depression, electroconvulsive therapy is known to have significant effects on the patients. This is generally used in cases where other medications and therapies fail to cure the mental state of the patient. With slightest side effects, this treatment has been observed to be highly effective (Psychological Disorders, pp.546-549). Conclusion: The above study has clearly reflected an understanding on the psychological disorder of depression that falls under the category of the mood disorders and provided with an idea on the current trends of diagnosis available as well as the different treatment facilities available for the disorder in the form of therapies and medications.

References 1) Psychological disorders (n.d.), Retrieved on December 8, 2011 2) Therapies (n.d.), Retrieved on December 8, 2011