Depression
What is Depression?
Depression is a common but serious mood disorder that can significantly impact your daily life. It can involve persistent feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and a lack of interest or pleasure in activities that you typically enjoy. Depression can be caused by a wide range of factors, and can affect
your thoughts, feelings, and behavior, leading to a range of emotional as well as physical problems.
How Depression
Can Affect You
If you are experiencing depression, you may struggle with a number of symptoms that can be distressing and disruptive to your life. These often include:
Persistent Sadness
You might feel deep sadness, emptiness, or hopelessness that doesn’t seem to go away.
Loss of Interest
You may lose interest or pleasure in activities that you once enjoyed, including hobbies, social activities, and sex.
Changes in Appetite & Weight
You might experience significant weight loss or gain due to changes in appetite.
Sleep Disturbances
You may have trouble sleeping, wake up too early, or sleep excessively.
Fatigue
You might feel tired all the time and have little energy for daily tasks.
Difficulty Concentrating
You may have trouble focusing, making decisions, or remembering things.
Feelings of Worthlessness or Guilt
You might have intense feelings of worthlessness or guilt, ruminate about past failures, or experience significant self-blame.
Physical Symptoms
You may experience physical symptoms such as headaches, digestive problems, or chronic pain without a clear physical cause.
Thoughts of Death or Suicide
You might have frequent thoughts of death, suicidal ideation, or suicide attempts.
How NYCBT Can Help
At NYCBT, we specialize in understanding what is contributing to your depression and how it affects you so that we can provide personalized, effective, evidence-based treatment. Your therapist will work with you to explore and address the specific symptoms of your depression in a supportive environment. You’ll also learn practical coping skills that will help you gain a sense of empowerment and greater control over your thoughts, emotions, and behavior.
We use specialized approaches that decades of research have shown to
be highly effective in treating depression. These include:
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
CBT helps you learn to
identify and challenge the negative thought patterns and behaviors that contribute to depression. By reframing these thoughts and increasing more effective behaviors, you can improve your mood and overall well-being.
Behavioral
Activation (BA)
BA focuses on increasing activities that you find enjoyable, fulfilling, and meaningful, and decreasing behaviors that keep you depressed. This approach specifically targets the trap many people fall into of doing things that feel better or easier in the short term but are unhelpful or unhealthy in the long term.