Depression is a common and serious medical illness that negatively affects a person’s mental and physical health. This report will illustrate about depression on how it influences a person’s emotions and health. It will also show the risk factors, prevalence of depression in Australia, what treatment and medication attention is needed for depression and how the treatment will cure it. This report will not include information about prevention in Australia and other campaigns that have been developed to try and to prevent this disease.
Depression is a mental disorder that affects the way you think, how you feel, and your behaviour. Most people will be directly or indirectly affected by depression through a friend or family member in their lives. It causes feelings of unhappiness or helplessness that can last long for a few days or few years. This is different than from being hurt for a small problem or disappointment in a day. Although depression can psychologically affect a person, it also has the potential to damage the brain’s physical structures. Briefly, depression can affect the nervous system’s central control centre.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), conducted a survey by the National Survey of Mental Health and wellbeing (2007), shows that one in 5 individuals aged sixteen to eighty-five years expertise one in every of the common styles of mental disease (anxiety, affection or mood disorders, and substance use disorders) in any one year.
Depression will strike at any time, however on the average, first seems during the late teens to middle 20s. Females are more likely than males to experience depression and anxiety. The prevalence of the disease is concerning One in six females can expertise depression in their life compared to at least one in eight men. some study shows that 17.8% of females aged 16 to 85 can experience a mental disorder in their lifetime compared to 12.2% of men.
Depression is one of Australia’s most prevalent mental disorders. Several factors or a combination of factors, can present to depression. Exactly what causes depression is not known. The main risk factors have identified by the National Institute of Mental Health as follows:
Neurotransmitters are brain chemicals that occur naturally and are likely to play a role in depression. In addition, changes in the function and effect of these neurotransmitters and their involvement in maintaining mood stability can play a major role in depression. People with depression might have totally different brain chemistry than those without the disease
Depression can occur in families. In addition, there is more possibility to develop people with a family history of depression than those whose families do not have the disease. Older adults who experienced depression when they were younger age are at higher risk of late-life depression than people who had not experienced the disease earlier in life.
At some point, nearly everybody experiences stressful life events: the death of a beloved ones, the loss of employment, an illness, or a difficult relationship. Some should deal with the early loss of a parent, violence, or sexual assault. Although not everyone facing these stresses develops a mood disorder, most of them do not, stress plays a vital role in depression.
Depression is one of the most mental illnesses that can be treated. There are three major depression treatments. For many people with depression, Psychotherapy and psychotropic medication are the two most important and far-reaching (Depression, 2019). In the article on depression, the treatment for depression is detailed as follows:
Psychotherapy aims to change the patient’s maladaptive cognitive and behavioural responses to stressful life events whereas additionally giving emotional support to the patient. Psychotherapy is sometimes used on its own to treat mild depression; psychotherapy is often used in combination with antidepressant medications for moderate to severe depression.
Medication might facilitate relieve a number of the symptoms of moderate and severe depression. Antidepressant medications are different than Psychotherapy, directly have an effect on the chemistry of the brain and presumably comes through their therapeutic effects by correcting the chemical dysregulation that is inflicting the Depression.
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has sometimes proved helpful in cases of severe major depression where curative results are needed quickly. A convulsion is produced by passing an electrical current through the person’s brain in this procedure. however, the best healing results are obtained for most people with depression by using a combination of psychotherapy and antidepressant drugs as mentioned before in Psychotherapy treatment.