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Major Depressive Disorder ( Mdd )

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Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a very common mental illness; it can affect anyone. Many people feel down, sad, or “blue” occasionally, but most the time is short-lived and passes quickly. Depression is more than grief after a loss or just feeling down and/or sad. Major Depressive Disorder consists of at least a two-week episode in which a person’s mood is lowered and can be accompanied with low self-esteem, diminished interest in most activities the individual once enjoyed, low energy, sleep too much or not enough, feeling hopeless and/or empty. An individual may also experience feelings of worthlessness or guilt, unable to concentrate or indecisiveness, and recurrent thoughts of death, recurrent suicidal ideation, or an actual …show more content…

Cognitive-behavioral perspective can be used alone or with medication to treat depression. At the origin of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, it is assumed that an individual’s mood is directly related to their patterns of thought. Negative, irrational thinking and thought process affect an individual’s mood, sense of self, behavior, and an individual’s physical state. The main goal of cognitive behavioral therapy is to help an individual recognize negative thought patterns, evaluate their quality of being valid, and interchange them with healthier ways of thinking.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is more of a short-term approach to depression than psychoanalysis and psychodynamic therapies. CBT may only require 10 to 20 sessions, while other therapies may require several years. With CBT, an individual may be asked to keep a journal by their therapist. The therapist then can help break down reactions and thought processes to life events and reactions that have been recorded in the journal. Several categories of self-defeating thought patters are as follows:
• All-or-nothing thinking: viewing the world in absolute black-and-white terms
• Disqualifying the positive: rejecting positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason
• Automatic negative reactions: having habitual, scolding thoughts
• Magnifying or minimizing the importance of an event: making a bigger deal about a specific event or moment

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