Can depression be eradicated?

Many years ago, many people believed that depression was not a disease, but just a person being in a bad mood. However, in recent years, depression has received more and more attention, and more and more people know that depression is a disease that can lead to death. Depression can make patients feel low, isolated from society, and cynical. Depression can be cured, but it is easy to relapse. So can depression be eradicated?

In Western medicine, depression is considered a mood disorder, but there is no given cause for depression, so it is difficult to find a way to treat depression. It can only be relieved by some antidepressant drugs, but it is difficult to eradicate it.

The clinical treatment goal of depression is to diagnose as early as possible, provide timely and standardized treatment, control symptoms, improve clinical cure rates, minimize disability and suicide rates, and prevent relapse and recurrence. The key to successful treatment is to completely eliminate clinical symptoms, reduce the risk of recurrence, improve the quality of life, restore good social functions, and achieve true clinical cure.

Available treatments include medication, psychotherapy, and physical therapy. Regarding psychotherapy, it can be used as a separate treatment option for some depressive disorders. However, once psychotherapy is considered for use in patients, it must be organically integrated into the overall psychiatric treatment plan for patients with depression, rather than being an independent treatment method outside the overall treatment plan. Regardless of the treatment method used, it actually requires comprehensive application. The prerequisite is to establish an alliance that is jointly committed to the patient's health, such as a good doctor-patient relationship, the patient's own mentality, the relationship between the patient and his family, a good external environment, etc.

Depression is just one of the typical diseases of depressive disorders, and the general public tends to replace the two with each other. In fact, depressive disorders also include persistent depressive disorder, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, depressive disorders caused by medical conditions, etc. This concept still needs our attention.