mood disorders

mood disorders

Introduction

Mood disorders are mental illness conditions that affect your general thinking and feelings about other people, yourself and life in general. It is characterized by raising or lowering of a person’s moods. This difference in feelings and thinking is brought about by the imbalance of the moods. Even though the cause of this imbalance is difficult to pin point, it is thought to be caused by a combination of environmental, biological, brain chemical imbalance and genetic factors. Mood disorder is a mental condition affecting both infants, young and old people. Diagnosis of mood disorder in infants has remained very difficult since the infants are not able to express how they feel or what is affecting them (Abdallah et al, 2015). Since affect is the external display of the mood, mood disorders are sometimes referred to as affective disorders. There are many different types of mood disorders but depression and mania are the main ones.

Decision 1: use of antidepressant drugs.

The decision for medication to prescribe to a mood disorder client depends on many factors which include the type of mood disorder the patient is suffering from. The patient may be suffering from major depression in this case the first decision is to used antidepressant drugs. There are different types of anti-depressant drugs with different pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamics effects. The major goal for using anti-depressant drugs is remission. Even though this goal is attain at times, it is very difficult to attain remission without relapse. In fact this remission is not achieved by using the first dose of anti-depressant (Brown, 2013). There are different classes of antidepressants depending on their pharmacological actions. Blocking monoamine transporters is one the classes of antidepressants. It works by blocking one or more of the chemical transporters such as serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine. When these chemical transporters as blocked the sensitivity of the neurotransmitters are affected hence reduces depression.

Another class of antidepressant is selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) which includes the drugs such as Prozac and Zoloft are the most commonly used antidepressant currently used. This antidepressant works by inhibiting the reuptake of serotonin monoamine. These drugs are commonly used due to their low toxicity levels. They also have very mild side effects as compared to other anti-depressants with reduced sexual desire which is a common side effect to most antidepressants with only few exceptions such as bupropion. SSRIs are not only used for depression but also for treatment of generalized anxiety disorder, panic and post-traumatic stress disorders and also obsessive-compulsive disorder (Di Florio et al, 2015). Fluoxetine is a unique type of SSRI in that it has serotonin 2c antagonist actions. The main importance of serotonin 2c antagonism is that it is an activating agent even the patients from the first dose are able to be energized from the fatigue of the first dose of the antidepressants with improvement and concentration.

Antidepressants are very important clinical diagnosis for the treatment of depression but a lot of care and critical observations must be taken to patients under treatment. Dosage is the most important thing in taking antidepressant drugs (Parker et al, 2015). The blood test for the client must be done regularly to must sure there is correct dose in the blood. The main aim of using antidepressants is to bring remission but this state is very unstable since there is always relapse or recurrence. High dose may lead to mania. This is major problem encountered in the decision to use antidepressant asmedical diagnosis.

Decision 2: Psychotherapy

This is the use of psychological means to treat mood disorders. It involves the use of direct or indirect interactions with the patient through psychological engagements it is also called talk therapy. This type of treatment is effective for bipolar disorder. There are different types of psychotherapy among them include interpersonal therapy which focuses on relationship with an aim to reduce strains caused by the illness. This types of therapy is useful in treating depression as the main aim but it is also possible that a relative may cause more stress. So as much as interpersonal psychotherapy is important, it has challenges and setbacks. Behavioral therapy is another type of psychotherapy which majorly involves and focuses on behaviors that reduce stress. The patient may decide to focus on the behaviors that reduce stress such as dancing, singing and even reading. An infant may be subjected to different bright colors. Social rhythm therapy is also another form of psychotherapy. This type of therapy is important to the patients suffering from both depression and mania disorders (Parker et al, 2015). It helps the patient to develop and maintain daily routine and normal sleep schedule.

The major challenge of psychotherapy is that, it involves the use of talks to treat a mood disorder. Instead of proper counseling, the third party may mislead and give you more stress and confusion.

Decision 3: compulsory treatment

Not all the decisions made to treat mood disorders must be accepted by the client. Some decisions are against the patients will (Parker et al, 2015). Compulsory treatment is one other these involuntary treatment methods to treat mood disorders. Some signs and symptoms of mood disorders are not easy to notice therefore a patient may look ok but through doctors’ examination and diagnosis founds out that the patient is suffering from mood disorders. The patient will be confined for treatment. It is also important in patients with advanced level of mood disorders such as psychiatrics are subjected into compulsory treatment against their will.

References

Abdallah, C. G., Sanacora, G., Duman, R. S., & Krystal, J. H. (2015). Ketamine and rapid-acting antidepressants: a window into a new neurobiology for mood disorder therapeutics. Annual review of medicine, 66, 509-523.

Brown, T. A., & Naragon-Gainey, K. (2013). Evaluation of the unique and specific contributions of dimensions of the triple vulnerability model to the prediction of DSM-IV anxiety and mood disorder constructs. Behavior therapy, 44(2), 277-292.

Parker, G., Fink, M., Shorter, E., Taylor, M. A., Akiskal, H., Berrios, G., … & Klein, D. F. (2015). Issues for DSM-5: whither melancholia? The case for its classification as a distinct mood disorder.

Di Florio, A., Forty, L., Gordon-Smith, K., Heron, J., Jones, L., Craddock, N., & Jones, I. (2015). Perinatal episodes across the mood disorder spectrum. JAMA psychiatry, 70(2), 168-175.