As we leave our northern hemisphere summer, seasonal affective disorder (also called SAD) is a type of depression that occurs at the same time every year. And mild to moderate depression can be treated by members of the National Council for Hypnotherapy. To find a qualified professional hypnotherapist please click on the link.
If you’re like most people with seasonal affective disorder, your symptoms start in the autumn and may continue into the winter months, sapping your energy and making you feel moody.
Less often, seasonal affective disorder causes depression in the spring or early summer. Treatment for seasonal affective disorder can include light therapy (phototherapy), psychotherapy and medications.
Time spent in hypnosis with a professional hypnotherapist has been proved to help. Hypnotherapists look at people as a whole, rather than just treating symptoms. Hypnotherapy for depression works with both the conscious and the subconscious mind in order to help you achieve the results you want.
Depression, also known as major depression, clinical depression or major depressive disorder, is a medical illness that causes a constant feeling of sadness and lack of interest. Depression affects how the person feels, behaves and thinks.
Hypnotherapy may help identify the causes and origins of the depression. Once this occurs people often describe it as a ‘light going on’.
Hypnotherapy can also help the sufferer recognise any patterns of negative thinking they may be caught up in.
Depression can obscure rational, realistic thinking, making everything in life appear awful, all the time. Hypnotherapy can help replace old thinking patterns with more useful ones. A professional hypnotherapist, who is a member of the National Council for Hypnotherapy and who has experience of working with people to overcome depression, can help the sufferer to understand the impact of the past, to focus on the present in order to work towards the desired future. In the main our members would treat mild and moderate depression with hypnotherapy. Some of our members have specialist training and will work with severe, clinical and bi-polar depression if it is within their sphere of competence.
Depression can lead to emotional and physical problems. Typically, people with depression find it hard to go about their day-to-day activities, and may also feel that life is not worth living.
Feeling sad, or what we may call ‘depressed’, happens to all of us. The sensation usually passes after a while. However, people with a depressive disorder – clinical depression – find that their state interferes with daily life. Their normal functioning is undermined to such an extent that both they, and those who care about them, are affected by it.
Don’t brush off that yearly feeling as simply a case of the ‘winter blues’ or a seasonal funk that you have to tough out on your own. Take steps to keep your mood and motivation steady throughout the year.
When experiencing depression it can feel as if there is nothing that will make a positive difference. This is not true. The very decision to do something is a significant one.
Remember, depression is not your fault. It is experienced by millions of people. Here are just a few statistics: 1 in 4 people will experience some kind of mental health problem; Mixed anxiety and depression is the most common mental disorder in Britain; women are more likely to seek treatment for a mental health problem. However, suicides rates show that British men are three times more likely to die by suicide than British women; about 10% of children have a mental health problem at any one time and depression affects 1 in 5 older people.