Cognitive Hypnotherapy For Depression
"Depression (noun) - Feelings of severe despondency and dejection" - Oxford English Dictionary (Compact version)
The above dictionary definition of depression is rather sparse and to be honest fails to properly describe the variation in the severity of the condition that I tend to see in practice. Clinical depression can take many forms, from mild depression that causes a lack of motivation and drive, through more subtle forms such as challenge avoidance, lack of confidence and social issues, through to severe depression (sometimes with suicidal tendendies) that are much more challenging work with and often require multi-disciplinary / multi-practitioner approaches.
Somewhere between 5-10% of the UK population (3-6 million people) will experience depression at some time in their lives, an astounding statistic. Depression regularly appears with anxiety issues in one form or another, and anecdotally I tend to see more high sensitivity people presenting with symptoms of the condition in my practices.
Fortunately I rarely see depression in primary school children, but sadly depression in teenagers and young people is appearing more often, sometimes linked to the additional pressures they are faced with growing up in the UK today at a time of great change in their lives, especially at school and connected to exams or performance, and relationships conducted at least in part via social media.
There are many causes of depression - some mental, some to do with physical or biochemical stressors, and perhaps also some genetic predisposition.
Cognitive Hypnotherapy as a modern and flexible therapy model can be used to help people treat the underlying causes of depression by targetting the subconscious patterns that are connected to the problems that drive depressive moods and behaviours.