Alternative Treatments for Depression

Hypnotherapy to treat depression

Hypnosis and hypnotherapy have long been established as highly effective methods of reducing the severity of depression, and there is no shortage of online resources where there is information available about hypnotists and hypnotherapists who can provide appropriate services, all over the world:
 
As highlighted in many articles from the MSN Health pages, it is common to suggest that the primary benefits of using hypnosis or hypnotherapy to address the depression problem are felt because of the ability to decrease the severity of some of the symptoms, and this is broadly true. For example, hypnotherapy can boost self-confidence, enhance self-esteem, and increase the skills necessary to deal with stressful and upsetting events.

If there is an established biological reason for depression, it is unlikely that either hypnotherapy or hypnosis will be able to do a great deal about redressing the chemical imbalance that underlies the biological cause of depression. That does not, however, mean that you have to revert to antidepressants, as you will read later.

Acupuncture for treating depression

Acupuncture has been a central aspect of Traditional Chinese Medicine for many centuries, and is now used as an all-round resource for treating depression. Acupuncture is able to address all of the aspects of depression (the mental, physical and emotional aspects) because applying acupuncture to different parts of the body can bring relief to other areas of the body in many different ways.

Traditional Chinese Medicine is divided into many individual approaches, each of which is focused on combating a particular ‘element’ of a problem, and this is as true of depression as it is with any other aspect of TCM.

In particular, each of the different elements of Chinese Medicine focuses on a different underlying reason for depression, although it should be pointed out that there is a degree of cross fertilization between each of the individual elements.

Consequently, before applying acupuncture as a treatment for depression, a trained acupuncturist would try to ascertain the underlying reasons why a particular individual is suffering from depression.

For example, it maybe because an individual sufferer is a person who likes to retain control, someone who is therefore frustrated and angry because of their inability to do so. Alternatively, it could be someone who is suffering depression because of ‘lost love’ and heartbreak, or someone who is depressed because of loss or grief.

Of course, in most of these situations, there will be elements of many reasons causing depression, but by isolating the major characteristic that is causing the problem, the acupuncturist can then decide upon an appropriate course of treatment using either traditional needles or electric probes.