While there was very little good to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic, the increasing use and acceptance of telemedicine may be the exception. Explore the many benefits of this approach to your mental health care.
“You treat a disease, you win, you lose. You treat a person, I guarantee you, you'll win, no matter what the outcome.”
I whole-heartedly agree with that statement. However, I cannot take credit for those words. Those are the words of Robin Williams, or more specifically, the words of his character in Patch Adams.
In the next series of posts I want to discuss the disease called depression. I will start by first discussing the diagnosis and the signs and symptoms of depression. I will then follow up with my thoughts on the various treatment options for depression and the strategies I employ with my patients to improve their outcomes. None of my thoughts and suggestions should serve in place of a formal consultation with a mental healthcare provider. However, I hope shedding light on mental health diagnoses like depression will lift the veil and social stigma on these chronic diseases that impact so many people.
Psychiatry has come a long way in the last decade. This is a time of continued discovery and increasing public awareness. The leaders of our professional organization, the American Psychiatric Association (APA), have suggested that we as mental health professionals are under a microscope. I agree that we are and I also strongly believe that we are up for the challenge. School shootings and celebrity suicides and overdoses have increasingly put a focus on mental health. Psychiatry has significantly improved the outcomes, treatment options and the prognosis of patients with mental illness. However, we still are unable to decrease the prevalence of the diseases we treat or prevent them. We know that the brain changes during an episode of depression and our treatments help it to return to normal (see the image below). Although we are getting closer,
we still currently do not have widely accessible blood or imaging tests that can confirm our diagnosis or localize the area of disease.
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