Depression is terrible. You have an internal problem that can't be seen on the outside, so you encounter a lot of misunderstanding in addition to that problem. Of course you want to be cheerful, but flipping that switch is easier said than done. Besides, you can never be sure that when you find happiness again it will stay that way.
To support the treatment of depression and prevent relapse, I discuss what is known about the effect of mindfulness on depression.
Depression is the most common mental illness, and 80 percent of people who have suffered from depression may relapse. Depression turns your life and the lives of those around you upside down, which is exactly what you want to avoid.
Fortunately, there is hope on the horizon that is scientifically based.
According to the American Psychology Association, mindfulness shows promise for reducing depressive symptoms and preventing relapse into depression. In mindfulness, the most important part is that you live in the here and now. You observe emotions and thoughts from moment to moment. When you notice a thought you watch it unfold without judgment and focus back on the moment. This makes it very difficult for your brain to spiral into thoughts.
Especially for people who suffer from depression, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy has been developed, which is currently undergoing extensive research for effectiveness, but with mostly positive results in small studies (up to about 45 participants).
Effect of mindfulness on depression
Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) allows people to disentangle themselves from all the negative dysfunctional thoughts you can have when you are depressed. Like mindfulness-based stress reduction, an MBCT program lasts 8 weeks and is taught in a group setting, at least in the studies discussed in this article. However, researchers do indicate that more research needs to be conducted on how these trainings are delivered and their duration. So perhaps 1-on-1 mindfulness training sessions might work even better, or such training could be shorter or longer for better effects.
In the program, participants learn more about mindfulness in general, body awareness, mindfulness yoga and are given homework to apply mindfulness. This can include household chores or while eating.
Through mindfulness, it is possible to look at your own thoughts with more distance; a participant can intervene at a negative thought about themselves with, for example, "There I go again, calling myself retarded." Without letting that make them emotional and depressed, because they don't let the belief that you are retarded (which is not so) arise. It is more that a thought pattern is recognized and put at bay. Also, the emotions that a thought can trigger are more accepted instead of being very concerned with controlling your emotions, which again can be frustrating. Which in turn leads to a kind of negative spiral.
Applying more mindfulness in your life also leaves little room for someone with depression to fret. This automatically creates more self-compassion because you are more aware of yourself and your body. In addition, avoidance behavior also becomes less in people with depression who apply mindfulness.
After all, why even fret about the past and the future. Living in the here and now is really experiencing life as it is, it is comfortable and that is what makes it fun.
Mindfulness for chronic depression
In some cases, treatment for depression does not work well. In many cases, additional antidepressants are then prescribed, but that does not always help either. In addition, cognitive behavioral therapy can sometimes not work well either. Cognitive behavioral therapy practitioners sometimes believe that people with depression have difficulty concentrating.
The researchers who looked at the effect of mindfulness for people with such "untreatable" depression disagreed that depressed people had difficulty concentrating.
Just the opposite is true, these people were highly motivated to apply mindfulness in everyday life as well and were doing a lot of this. Thereby, people with depression where more and more medication is prescribed are often also more engaged in alternative treatments. The mindfulness made these patients feel more in control of treating the depression themselves.
Mindfulness for postpartum depression
Stress and negative mood during pregnancy is a risk factor for postpartum depression and a disruption in the bond building between mother and child. Therefore, it was investigated whether women who do not suffer from depression could benefit from mindfulness in advance. In this case, women received mindfulness-based stress reduction therapy during pregnancy and immediately after pregnancy and another group did not.
As early as the third trimester, a difference could be seen in anxiety and negative moods. Therefore, researchers believe it may hold promise for preventing postpartum depression.
Another study on women and mindfulness during pregnancy also showed that mindfulness can help reduce depressive symptoms during pregnancy.
This happened because participants actually sometimes stopped what they were doing or thinking about for a moment to think about what was actually happening.
Embracing the now and accepting emotions and situations also helped reduce depression and anxiety. Researchers also reported teaching mindfulness to participants during pregnancy exercises.
In addition, the effect of mindfulness yoga was also studied in women who were at high risk for postpartum depression. What was found: mindfulness yoga had a significant effect on reducing and preventing postpartum depression and a positive effect on mindfulness moments and mother-child bonding. This was admittedly a pilot study in which only 18 women participated, but these results are promising and really selected for a high risk of postpartum depression.
Mindfulness for depression with pregnancy
Most women want to take as little medication as possible during pregnancy because it can affect the unborn child. Women with depression who normally receive antidepressants and then no longer want to take them are also advised by researchers to apply mindfulness during pregnancy.
Mindfulness after depression
Currently, depression is mainly treated with cognitive behavioral therapy with or without hypnosis. Usually you also get antidepressants to avoid suffering from your depression and relapse. But a new way has been developed to address depression, Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT).
Studies show that this therapy works as effectively against relapse after depression as antidepressants and often even better. The risk of relapse in people who had relapsed more often was reduced by 43% with mindfulness, while other treatments only reduced the risk of relapse by 34%. So you can now literally trade in the pill for mindfulness therapy and live a depression-free life without the nasty side effects of medication.
The study also showed that people with a history of child abuse and maltreatment benefit more than other people with depression. This is very special because people with this history are especially likely to relapse after depression.
The reason this therapy works is because people at risk for depression often have negative thoughts about themselves and their lives. These thoughts can cause you to relapse into depression. The therapy allows people to recognize these thoughts and do something about them and make those thoughts less of an influence on their emotions, this is said by lead researcher Willem Kuyken at the University of Oxford.
Other reasons why exactly it can work against relapse have not yet been figured out by researchers.
In addition, this treatment was also compared for effectiveness with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). This study found that both therapies worked equally well, but that among people who had relapsed more than four times, they responded even slightly better to CBT than those who had relapsed less often. This may indicate that mindfulness works better for people who have not had a relapse yet or only a few times, but CBT is again better for people who have had more than four relapses in their depression.
However, when looking at the whole group, there were no significant differences between the two treatment methods against depression relapse. Not even after 6 or 12 months, so even the long-term results of mindfulness are as good as those of cognitive behavioral therapy.
Want to learn more about how mindfulness and cognitive behavioral therapy, possibly under hypnosis, can improve your life? Then be sure to come to a seminar or check out the Hypnosis Institute Netherlands' training programs.
Sources:
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2015/03/cover-mindfulness.aspx
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00737-008-0214-3
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00737-012-0264-4
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165032710006087
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165032710006087
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1744388112000485
