Depression and Anxiety Treatment is More Than a Pill

When you go to your doctor for depression and anxiety treatment they usually want you to take a pill, wait a few weeks, and report back if you have noticed any improvement. For sufferers of these very legitimate medical conditions, this may be exactly what they need, but most often it is going to take prescriptions, therapy, and a complete change of scenery and medical professionals to help regain the perspective needed to begin a life free from despair and worry.

Rehab has taken on the connotation of meaning “substance abuse” and “addiction”, but what it really means is a medical and mental process that allows a person suffering to come to a realization that they need help and getting it from the right physicians and therapists needed to change their life from being wasted to being lived. Since depression and anxiety treatment is such a misguided concept, doctors and practitioners from all over the United States are taking the approach of pharmaceuticals and nothing else. These “magic pills” need to be used in conjunction with therapy and consistent monitoring to insure they are working correctly within the time frame expected.

Depression and anxiety treatment is a way for a rehabilitation center to have all day of every day to watch a person suffering with these debilitating disorders. They can see them interact with the other people who are in the center for treatment. They can get their family background and have intense therapy sessions with them. They can also have them speak to other people who are going through exactly the same things and see if they can offer some insight or hope in to the process. Usually when a person comes to treatment, they are considering it their last option. It can also be considered their beginning.

When depression and anxiety treatment is being established, one of the things that a counselor, therapist, or physician is going to find out is whether there has been any substance abuse. This can either be the cause of the mental instability, or the psychological disorders can be what could have caused the addiction. Dual diagnoses are common amongst sufferers of these diseases. They often try to keep the thoughts of depression and anxiety away by self-medicating with drugs or alcohol, or they have been abusing these substances for so long that depression and anxiety have manifested.

No matter how or why these things have come to be, they need to be treated by professionals in a safe and healthy environment. While being prescribed medication to deal with the mental disorders they are facing, a person can also undergo drug addiction detox to gain a clearer perspective and start back in to their lives free from illegal chemicals that can alter their brain. Drug addiction rehab treatment can help conquer not only their substance abuse, but also the mind altering affects they now have, or the mental illness they have been suffering from that was the cause for their addictions.

Relearning Communication in Recovery

When an alcoholic or addict gets sober, nearly every aspect of their life will change. Old behaviors will be done away with and new skills will be learned. One of the most important of these skills is communication.

Many people who enter drug and alcohol rehab facilities arrive with communication skills that are, at best, unhealthy and ineffective. Usually, this is the result of already lacking skills that have been further hampered by years of drug and alcohol abuse.  Most addicts and alcoholics have many issues at play in their disease; the drinking and using are but symptoms. When one enters treatment and receives help from a group of professionals, the other contributing elements become more readily apparent.

Once an alcoholic or addict make a choice to enter treatment and begins to uncover the deeper reasons why they began and continued using, they are able to see where they used drugs and alcohol to help us communicate by lowering our inhibitions or to prevent us from communicating by medicating our feelings.  By discarding old behaviors investing time and focus to learning new ones, alcoholics and addicts are able to learn to communicate in ways that are loving and kind, healthy and effective. After spending time in a drug rehab focusing on learning new skills, when the addict or alcoholic returns home, the family is often amazed that they are even talking to the same person who left them to seek treatment.  It is not a change that happens overnight but it is a change that begins once a choice is made to seek help.