It’s not always easy to identify what’s going on when your mental health crashes and you’re troubled by symptoms like low mood or anxious thoughts. You may be sure that your mental health is less than optimal, and know that you could use extra support — but do you need treatment for depression, anxiety, or both?
Reaching out to mental health care professionals helps you to better understand your thoughts and emotions. The psychiatric and mental health specialists at Greater Lowell Psychiatric Associates, LLC of North Chelmsford, Massachusetts, under the leadership of Dr. Ronald P. Winfield, support new and existing patients. We work with you on detangling symptoms, arriving at the correct diagnosis, and finding a treatment path that effectively improves your mental health and wellness.
Depression and anxiety are both common mental health complaints, and they have significant overlap in terms of symptoms, as well. In this blog, we explore the overlap between depression and anxiety in more detail.
You know that you’re not in great mental health. You’re often tired, sad, or worried, and you realize that your low mood isn’t necessarily reflective of the actual state of your life. You could feel much better than you do.
In cases of both depression and anxiety, your overall sense of your mental health is likely to be that something is off, and that living your life in peace and happiness seems more difficult than it should. Common symptoms of both depression and anxiety include:
In general, depression centers more on sadness or loss of energy, while an anxiety disorder relates to an overactive fear response. However, as you can see from the list above, these two mental health conditions have a lot of common ground.
Even if you’re not sure what mental health disorder is causing these symptoms, you shouldn’t suffer through them alone. Seek mental health support if these symptoms sound familiar to you.
With treatment, both of these conditions typically improve. That’s true even if you have both depression and anxiety, which is not uncommon. Often, effective treatments for depression result in reduction of anxiety disorder intensity. And, increasing your ability to manage anxiety may expand your horizons, improve your quality of life, and help you fight off depression.
At Greater Lowell Psychiatric Associates, we start your treatment by customizing your care for your unique needs. Your provider asks you about your symptoms, personal history, and health history in order to correctly identify whether you have depression, anxiety, or both.
Mental health treatment approaches like psychotherapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), and healthy lifestyle changes may improve both depression and anxiety symptoms. Medication management helps with both depression and anxiety, as well.
If you and your provider determine that your symptoms are mostly caused by an anxiety disorder, you may benefit from exposure therapy to overcome triggers or phobias. For depression, Greater Lowell Psychiatric Associates offers transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) therapy with the cutting-edge CloudTMS™ system. TMS treatment nonpharmacologically stimulates the areas of your brain that regulate your mood.
Whether the cause of your life-disrupting mental health symptoms is depression or an anxiety order, with the right help, you can heal and find symptom relief. Contact the mental health care providers at Greater Lowell Psychiatric Associates, LLC, online or over the phone now to schedule your initial consultation appointment.
