article on depression is not the solution
Answers
What many people think is that you have to deal with the factors which trigger depression. For example, your boyfriend hits you. Then you can change this factor by ending the relationship, for example. Dealing with the factors is indeed a good option. If you are abused in your relationship, something will have to change. Not making any changes is not a solution for depression.
People have an instinctive need to be happy. That is why it would seem logical that, if they are not happy in a situation, they will try to change this situation. Changing triggering factors is an important solution for depression. But what if the factors, which lead to depression, are the person’s characteristics?
In other cases it is not possible to change the situation. The triggering factors of depression sometimes namely are the characteristics of other people. For example, your boss is constantly cursing at you. In this case you might keep trying, but often your boss will not change their behavior. In this case there is another solution for depression: changing your thoughts. If it is difficult to change anything else, you can at least change your view of a situation.
Often, the above situations can lead to a depression because you put a certain value on the situation For example, you feel miserable because your boss curses at your. It could be different. You could for example think that the opinion of one person does not define you. WIth such a response, you do not let your boss bring you down, meaning your risk to get a depression becomes smaller.
Another option is to take away your focus from your mind. A typical characteristic of depression is a negative flurry of thoughts, which keeps going through your head. A solution for depression could therefore be to get out of these thoughts by focussing on your body instead. This can be done by doing something physical. An example could be going for a walk. Because you are physically active, the change that the negative thoughts take over becomes smaller. Behavioral activation could mean that you learn techniques like the one that was just mentioned. Some schools of psychology give tips to treat triggering situations or factors in a different way.
Solution for depression: get startedWe have summed up several solutions for depression now, but what can you do with these? With those ideas in mind you can get started. Think for yourself about which factors are bound to your depression, and see if any of the ideas above might be applicable to these factors. What is a possible solution for your depression?
Solution for depression: ’15Minutes4Me.com’The online self-help program ’15Minutes4Me.com’, too, is based on ideas. It is a self-help program which was developed by doctors from cognitive and solution focused psychological schools. At the hand of this program, you can spend 15 minutes daily on yourself and on how you can treat your depression. At the hand of solution focused questions and videos you will gain insight into possible solutions for you.
What if I am depressed?You can fill out our free online depression test to learn of your depression score. You can click the link above, which will connect you to the online test. After filling out the questions, your score is automatically calculated and interpreted!
A Bedfordshire inquest heard last week how Robert and Jennifer Stokes, both in their fifties, were helped to commit suicide last year at a Swiss euthanasia clinic run by the charity Dignitas. Neither of them was terminally ill. Both had chronic medical problems and a history of depression, but had repeatedly declined treatment.
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At their inquest, the couple were described as ‘attention-seeking’. Their son said in a statement that his parents had used their medical conditions to seek pity. ‘I considered them both to be mentally ill. The only terminal illness they had was in their heads.’ The Stokes were devout Jehovah’s Witnesses who refused blood transfusions, yet broke their church’s taboo on suicide; attention-seekers who had attempted suicide several times - often seen more as a cry for help than a serious death-wish. They were obviously disturbed and in need of help. What they found was a helping hand holding a cupful of lethal barbiturates.
The campaign to legalise voluntary euthanasia is gathering momentum worldwide, especially in Europe where it is now legal in the Netherlands and Belgium. In Britain, a parliamentary Bill to follow suit was introduced last year, the Liberal Democrat conference supports legalisation, and so do public opinion polls. The international movement to legitimise euthanasia helped to bring the Stokes to their unnecessary end, by popularising the idea that assisting people to kill themselves is an act of public charity.
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Respectable pro-euthanasia campaigns were quick to distance themselves from Dignitas. They argue that this cowboy operation can appeal to British people only because voluntary euthanasia is illegal here, and insist that they would only advocate assisted suicide for the terminally ill.
But once euthanasia is legitimised it becomes hard to deny any request. Campaigners demand ‘the right to die’ as a ‘freedom’ that will ‘empower’ patients. If euthanasia is seen as a question of individual rights, then where do you draw the line? How can you allow a human right to some but deny it to others? Who can say whether or not an individual is facing, as Dutch law insists they must be, ‘unbearable, interminable suffering’?
Everybody knows that doctors take humane measures to hasten death at the end. And we accept that individuals already are ‘free’ to die, since nobody can prevent or punish a determined suicide. But asking the Government and judges to endorse voluntary euthanasia is another matter. This is not only about the individuals involved. It is about the attitude that our society takes to the value of human life. However desperate some may feel, we should not give official approval to the notion that death is a solution to the problems of living.
There is no need for scaremongering about ‘Nazi-style eugenics’ in order to see what can happen once it becomes respectable to view some lives as worth less than others. In Belgium, no sooner had they legalised adult euthanasia than a debate started on extending it to children. In France last year a nurse convicted of murdering six terminally ill patients received only ten years in jail, after claiming that she had wanted to end their suffering. A nursing sister in Cheshire has just been convicted of trying to kill four elderly patients in order to free hospital beds. ‘Why delay the inevitable?; she said.
The Derbyshire coroner wants a public inquiry into what he suspects could be the first case of forced ‘mass euthanasia’, after claims that 11 hospital patients were starved to death.
And now euthanasia has become a fashionable cause among the young and fit. (Polls suggest that it is rather less popular with the elderly.) There are macabre websites with names such as LibertyNow, a Good Euthanasia Guide 2004 (what next - the Rough Guide?) and an American goth-rock band, called Hell on Earth, has vowed to ‘raise awareness of the right-to-die issue’ by carrying out an assisted suicide on stage.
Have we become so nihilistic that the difference between life and death can be reduced to simply another lifestyle choice? You do not need to support the reactionary ‘pro-life’ lobby in order to take a stand against this morbid defeatism. We should make it clear that as a society we do not want to assist suicide or endorse euthanasia, and we do not accept that living is a barrier to liberty, or that depression is a cause of death. No doubt it will upset some distressed individuals. But that’s life.