Depression Treatment
Anxiety disorders can make your life miserable. At Kentuckiana Treatment Center for Anxiety & OCD, we first help you understand your disorder, and we then teach you the evidence-based tools to overcome it. Whether this is your first time seeking treatment for depression or your fifth, we encourage you to try again. Most of our patients improve significantly after just 16 sessions. Contact us at (270) 238-3566. We serve clients in Kentucky and Indiana.
Connection Between Anxiety & Depression
Almost seven out of every 10 people meeting diagnostic criteria for an anxiety-related disorder are also suffering from depression. So, if that’s you, the first thing to know is that you’re in good company.
But the majority of these individuals are experiencing what’s called secondary depression. That doesn’t mean the depression is less severe than the anxiety or that it happened "second" (or after the anxiety). Secondary depression is a set of depressive symptoms that occur as a result of longstanding and often severe anxiety. Most people with secondary depression report that the more severe their anxiety, the more severe their depression symptoms.
Diagnosis of Depression
Psychiatrist Aaron Beck developed the Beck Depression Inventory to aid in the diagnosis of depression. These two points must be true:
- The patient has a pessimistic view of self, world, and the future.
- The patient exhibits behavioral patterns, often including disturbances with social life, hobbies and intellectual stimulation, and physical activity that maintain a depressive outlook.
Therapists note that the patient is also usually adept at arguing why his or her pessimistic views are accurate, making talk therapy, for the most part, a fruitless pursuit.
Best Treatment for Depression
The good news, as the old saying goes, is that “The street goes both ways.” When we use proven treatment processes to significantly reduce your anxiety severity, your depressive symptoms will likely go away on their own. In other words, for many depression sufferers, we don’t need to engage in any treatment for their depression. They’re depressed because they’re anxious.
Behavior Activation for a Subset of Patients
But for patients who require more active treatment for their depression, we’ll use behavior activation, a specific form of cognitive behavior therapy that is proven to reduce the severity of major depressive symptoms.
The most important step in how we treat depression is to treat the anxiety if a person is anxious. If depression is a separate issue from anxiety, we encourage and work systematically with patients to start engaging healthy, antidepressive behaviors. They need to frontload their days with social activities, hobbies, eating well and regularly, and exercising — even though they don’t want to. It’s about making feelings follow our behavior rather than letting behavior follow feelings.
Find Hope & Healing Today
Discover relief and reclaim joy with our specialized depression treatments.
What We Treat
In addition to depression, we successfully treat the following diagnoses.
For more information about Kentuckiana, see our Who We Are page. And be sure to listen to our OCD Straight Talk podcast for the anxiety disorders community.
Why Choose Us
We get results — even for patients who’ve been in treatment for years.
We use evidence-based ERP treatment; most other therapists use talk therapy.
We teach you how to stop rumination, problematic behavior, and compulsion.
Our patients get better faster and usually stay better.
Hope for Healing Depression
It is possible to move on from depression. Live the life you want to. The time is now. Contact us at (270) 238-3566. Kentuckiana serves clients in Kentucky and Indiana.