About Depression

What do we do to care for someone with depression?

Guys Cross Care Home provides care in a small scale domestic environment that facilitates quality on-going recovery focused care.

We assist people with depression to maximise their potential and improve their quality of living by:

• Providing flexible, individualised care packages,
• Providing Psychosocial treatments (talking therapies)

Work with the person to develop strategies for:

• Recognising risk factors and how to respond
• Maintaining medication regimes
• Developing communication skills
• Developing social skills
• Meeting nutritional needs / preparation of meals
• Meeting personal care
• Meeting domestic skills needs – shopping, cleaning, laundry,

We also help people to learn how to manage:

• challenging behaviour
• anger issues
• sleeping problems

DEPRESSION

Types of depression

Many people at some point in their lives will experience a mild form of depression, it doesn’t stop the person leading their life but everything seems harder to do and seems less worthwhile. Often this type of depression will not require treatment other than recognising the symptoms and taking time for themselves and possibly talking through the feelings with a friend, this is called mild depression.

However clinical depression is a more severe form of depression that can generally be broken down into two main types:

Reactive depression – This depression usually occurs in response to a situation or event e.g. bereavement

Endogenous depression – Generally there is no obvious reason for this type of depression i.e. there has been no incident or event that may be causing the depression.  This type of depression is thought to be associated with low levels of neurotransmitters, particularly noradrenaline and serotonin. (neurotransmitters are chemicals that are used by neurons and receptors in the brain to pass messages from one to the other, Therefore if there is a lack of these chemicals the messages will not be passed as efficiently).

Symptoms of Depression

 Persistent sad, anxious or “empty” mood

• Feelings  of hopelessness, pessimism
• Feelings of guilt, worthlessness, helplessness
• Loss of interest or pleasure in hobbies and activities that were once enjoyed including sex
• Decreased energy, fatigue, being “slowed down”
• Difficulty concentrating, remembering, making decisions
• Insomnia, early morning wakening or oversleeping
• Appetite and or weight loss or overeating weight gain
• Thoughts of suicide; suicide attempts
• Restlessness, irritability
• Persistent physical symptoms that do not respond to treatment such as headaches, digestive disorders and chronic pain
• Using more drugs e.g. alcohol than usual
• Crying a lot
• Lack of self confidence, self esteem
• Being preoccupied with negative thoughts
• Self harming
• psychosis