Depression

Depression can arise because of a specific stressor or event in your life, or it can come out of the blue. If you think you’ve been experiencing symptoms of clinical depression, Katrina Zlataric, PMHNP-BC, and the team at KZ Psychiatric Services in Barnhart, Missouri, can help. Katrina excels in helping patients recover from depression using an approach that combines psychotherapy and medication. Call KZ Psychiatric Services or request an appointment online today. 

What is depression?

Depression is a mental health condition that changes how you feel so you’re always down, worrying, despairing, and unable to see a way out of your misery. Depression can have a devastating effect on your life if left untreated. In some cases, it can lead to suicide.

Everyone feels blue now and again or has a bad day. It’s also perfectly understandable to feel miserable when things go wrong in your life, you get diagnosed with a severe illness, or you experience trauma like a relationship breakdown or bereavement.

If you’re healthy, these moods and feelings pass in time. It could take weeks or months to get over a severe trauma, but gradually you go through the grieving process and adjust. However, if you have clinical depression, those negative feelings never leave and, more often than not, get progressively worse.

What are the symptoms of depression?

Depression affects everyone slightly differently. For instance, some people find they become insomniacs, unable to sleep very much at all. Others sleep but have nightmares and disturbed sleep, waking up exhausted. Or your depression could make you feel fatigued all the time, so you spend many hours asleep.

Common symptoms of depression include lack of energy, a loss of interest in life, and the things that normally make you happy, and weepiness. You might have problems concentrating or making decisions, and changes in your appetite. Typical feelings when you have depression include:

• Sadness
• Worthlessness
• Hopelessness
• Self-loathing
• Guilt

When you have clinical depression, these feelings aren’t under your control, so there’s no way to shake it off. It’s essential to seek help for your depression from KZ Psychiatric Services as soon as possible.

How is depression treated?

There are two fundamental elements to treating depression. Patients who have milder forms of depression can benefit from psychotherapy, but for most people who have depression, a combination of talking therapies and medications produces the best results.

The team at KZ Psychiatric Services prepares a treatment plan for your depression after reviewing your symptoms. Katrina may prescribe antidepressant medication to reduce the severity of your symptoms and enable you to benefit from psychotherapy. Antidepressants can be extremely helpful in managing depression, but it can sometimes take a while to find the type of medication that suits you best.

Don’t let depression take over your life. Call KZ Psychiatric Services to schedule an appointment.