Depression and Anxiety Presentation
I have been giving this presentation on depression and anxiety lately, and I thought I should share it with everyone here:
Good evening. I’m a clinical counsellor who specializes in treating people suffering from depression and/or anxiety. I’ll talk about depression first: depression is different for everyone. I like this definition of depression by the Mayo Clinic: Depression is a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest. It affects how you feel, think and behave and can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems. You may have trouble doing normal day-to-day activities, and sometimes you may feel as if life isn't worth living.
That’s quite a range, isn’t it, from having trouble with daily activities to feeling as if life isn’t worth living. Take a minute to reflect for yourself right now. Are you somewhere in this range? If this were a scale from 1 – 10, with 1 being having trouble getting daily chores done, like taking out the garbage and shoveling the driveway and 10 being feeling that life isn’t worth living, where are you at?
Like depression, anxiety is a mood disorder and anxiety presents differently for people too. Psychologist Brené Brown defines anxiety as escalating fear and loss of control, worst case scenario thinking and imagery and total uncertainty. Anxiety at its worst leads to panic attacks. If this were a scale from 1 – 10, with 1 being “I’m a little worried about something that I have no control over, like whether or not its going to snow” and 10 is feeling like you’re having a heart attack, you can’t breathe and your palms are slick with sweat, where are you at on this scale? Take a minute to reflect.
So here’s an interesting fact about depression and anxiety. While they are defined as separate mental illnesses, they are very often co-morbid. They occur at the same time in the same person. Not always, but very, very often. It makes sense if you think about it this way: you’re depressed, so you’re anxious about how that is going to affect your life. Your anxiety is taking the joy out of your life, so you’re depressed about that.
Approximately 2.5 million Canadian adults or over 10% of the adult population suffers from diagnosed depression, which is known as major depressive disorder by the way. That’s 1 in 10. How many adults are walking around without having been diagnosed?
In a recent study, a total of 2.4 million Canadians, so about 1 in 10 again, reported symptoms consistent with generalized anxiety disorder. That’s what you call long-term, habitual anxiety.
What do you think happens to these numbers in winter? 38% of people surveyed have reported increased stress and depression in winter, particularly around Christmas. Those stats surprise me. As a counsellor who specializes in depression and anxiety, I know that all of my clients talk about higher anxiety and depression at Christmas.
But winter, or Christmas, aren’t the only time of year for these mental illnesses to manifest or increase. Winter is a trigger for some people. Major life events like changing jobs, moving homes, having babies, losing loved ones, losing friends… these are all things that cause us stress and increase our anxiety and depression. Yes, even political events can affect us. There has been a marked increase in anxiety and depression since the recent American election, for example.
Anything that causes you to feel anxious or depressed, especially if that feeling lasts for at least a day, is what is referred to as a trigger. I’d like you to take a minute now to think about things that are triggers for you and at the risk of over-sharing, I’ll share some of my triggers as an example: snow (slippery sidewalks), Christmas, Covid, the dentist, ill health for a family member and so on. What are some of your triggers? I invite you to take a minute and think about things that make you feel anxious, or depressed. In the next few days, more and more triggers will come to mind for you.
You can take medication for depression and anxiety and you can talk to a counsellor. Medication has been shown to be 50% effective, counselling is 50% effective. Combining the two is probably your best bet for dealing with long-term depression and anxiety. For short-term help, like getting through Christmas or over the death of a friend, I highly recommend counselling.
There are many different types of therapy available to handle depression and anxiety and different counsellors use their own favourites. Mine are a combination of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) and logotherapy.
CBT works on the principle that people’s emotional reactions and behavior are influenced by their thoughts. In counselling then, I would explore your thoughts about Christmas, or any other stress in your life, with you. For example, maybe you are catastrophizing. You think of Christmas dinner then you think, “what if I burn the turkey”, this leads to “the dinner will be ruined”, then “everybody is going to have an awful evening”, then “Christmas is ruined and its my fault”, then “I’ll ruin all the other holidays”, then “my family will cut me out of their lives,” and so on, and so on… CBT can help you get off that Doomsday train.
Logotherapy is the other therapy I use in my practice. Logotherapy is a therapeutic approach that helps people find personal meaning in life. It's a form of psychotherapy that is focused on the future and on our ability to endure hardship and suffering through a search for purpose. It explores big questions: why am I here? Why am I suffering?
Many counsellors here in Kamloops use many different therapies to treat depression and anxiety. I encourage you to try different counsellors and different therapies until you find one that works for you….for long-term, ongoing depression and anxiety that you just can’t shake by yourself.
I wrap up this presentation by leading people through a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction exercise (which is familiar to some of my clients) and then checking in with everyone again as to where their depression/anxiety numbers are after the exercise.
Yes, I'm available to give this presentation in person around Kamloops. Just give me a call or send me a message if you're interested in having me come in person to your meeting.