Depression is a mood disorder that manifests itself differently depending on a person’s age, as it conditions many of our habits and characteristics. In this article we will see how depression is in adults and how it can be treated with the help of professionals.

And precisely because this psychological disorder is expressed through our ability to enjoy life, its symptoms are manifested differently depending on the age of the person, since it conditions many of our habits and characteristics. In this article we will see what depression looks like in adults and how it can be treated with the help of professionals .

What does depression look like in adults?

Depression in adults is a relatively common mood disorder, and in fact is estimated to affect about 200 million people worldwide .

The symptoms, among many others, by which it is characterized are basically abulia (extreme lack of motivation and energy to do most of the daily activities necessary to live well, such as cooking, showering, going out to work, etc.), anhedonia (inability to experience pleasure) and an intense feeling of sadness, melancholy or hopelessness.

Furthermore, the adult population is more flexible when it comes to finding strategies to communicate what they feel , so age also brings diversity in the way of verbalizing the problem and explaining it to friends, family and mental health professionals.

The Help of Psychologists: Treatment of Depression in Adults

These are some of the main strategies that psychologists use to perform psychotherapy in cases of depression in adults.

1. Acting on ideas and behavior patterns

The psychology centres with a more effective proposal when it comes to treating depression in adults, use tools that allow them to intervene both in the way the patient perceives and interprets reality, and in the set of actions they usually use to interact with the environment and with others.

For example, the psychology centre Psicomaster, located in the centre of Madrid, uses several types of related therapy that allow it to do this: Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and EMDR.

The first is one of the most used forms in psychotherapy to intervene in many mental disorders, and it focuses on a twofold improvement: to help the person learn healthier and more useful patterns of behaviour so as not to reinforce the presence of the mental disorder through interaction with what surrounds us, and to modify the ideas and beliefs that are strongly rooted in the patient and that prevent him/her from perceiving reality in a constructive and emotionally balanced way.

For its part, when Psicomaster uses Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, the aim is also to influence actions and thoughts and beliefs, but adapting the treatment to the context in which each patient lives in particular and helping them to accept the imperfection of many aspects of life and what it means to exist in it, so that they contribute to changing what can be solved and learn to embrace the imperfections that cannot be changed or do not depend on us.

In this way, you unlearn ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that cause the symptoms of depression to recur in adults, and you learn other habits that allow you to live better.

2. Patient activation

It is very important that the adult patient gets out of the dynamic of passivity and sedentary life habits in which he or she has settled because of depression. For this reason, a set of strategies called Behavioral Activation is usually used, which aims to create the situations and contexts necessary for the patient to commit to stimulating activities with the capacity to involve the whole body.

The idea here is not to have a blind faith in the person’s will power and hope that the motivation will serve to mobilize them and engage them in hobbies, but to do something so that the patient is more exposed to stimulating situations with the ability to generate interest and get them hooked” on a task or set of tasks: going out to the park to play sports, taking care of a garden, walking in unfamiliar areas of the city, etc.

3. Working with the family and the inner circle

Another of the courses of action undertaken in specialized centers such as Psicomaster has to do with networking with the family and the close environment of the patient . No matter how much the person affected by depression in adults has already left childhood behind, the role of their loved ones is still very relevant, among other things because the disorder itself causes them to lose autonomy.

The fact that psychologists coordinate with patients’ families helps those who suffer from depression first hand to continue to have support and guidance for action once they have left the office, between sessions of psychotherapy.

Thus, the specialists inform the families about how to live with an adult with depression , how to deal with the presence of the pathology in conversations, what type of actions to follow to encourage the person to keep moving and get involved in relationships with others, etc.

4. The intervention on anxiety spots

It is very common that depression in adults does not appear in isolation, but arises at the same time as other harmful psychological disorders. Anxiety disorders and the experience of psychological trauma are part of the most frequent psychological phenomena that overlap with extremely low mood, and many times the one that causes depression has to do with these other problems.

That is why, in well-equipped psychology centres such as Psicomaster, there are professionals who are experts in treating all these types of overlapping disorders. For example, if the depression is linked to a psychological trauma, EMDR therapy or systematic desensitization can be used to make the source of discomfort through which the trauma manifests itself disappear, while intervening in the depression itself.

Conclusion

Depression in adults is a mood disorder that is complex in the way it expresses itself in patients, and due to its potential to wear down the quality of people’s lives or even encourage suicidal ideation, it deserves to be treated by professionals .

As much as we have been educated to assume that adult life is full of difficult moments and sacrifices, depression is a very serious pathology that cannot be normalized. The sooner you act on the first symptoms, the better.