Major Depressive Disorder: A Case Study

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Third, social support and connection are essential to depression treatment. These are important in treatment because MDD can cause an individual to socially isolate himself, making his loneliness worse and forcing himself to face challenging symptoms alone. To better understand this tendency to push others away and isolate oneself, I contacted Kathy Thompson of Glasgow, Kentucky, who has been dealing with depression since 2012. Kathy provides an insider’s perspective of how it feels to actually experience depression, which can not be found in much of academic research, and gives insight into how Major Depressive Disorder can manifest into antisocial behavior:
“I didn't see how my actions affected people around me and I thought they were just …show more content…
This is more easily said than done, however, so those providing social support for the individual can be more helpful by making a conscious effort to be patient and empathetic, realizing that there may be a period of time in the beginning of treatment, or possibly in relapses, when the individual under treatment is struggling with symptoms. As part of treatment, this social factor will not only help the individual stick to treatment and improve their symptoms, but social support can be essential in maintaining progress by helping the individual cope with stress, raising their self-esteem, and enabling them to handle negative feelings or thoughts better than they would alone (Wang, Cai, Qian, & Peng, 2014, …show more content…
F. Renner, P. Cuijpers, and M. J. H. Huibers argue in their article, “The Effect of Psychotherapy for Depression on Improvements in Social Functioning: a Meta-Analysis,” (2014) that patients being treated with psychotherapy experience both improved symptoms and improved social functioning. The authors use logical appeal by supporting their claim with numerical evidence from an analysis of multiple studies on this subject. This data seems to show a positive correlation between psychotherapy and improvement, and it is notable that changes in social functioning occur at the same time as changes in symptom severity (a result of psychotherapy), but authors Renner, Cuijpers, and Huibers admit themselves that “changes in social functioning are not fully explained by changes in depressive symptom severity,” (2014, p. 2922). This basically means that the results of psychotherapy -- symptom improvement -- can not fully explain social functioning improvement, since there is not necessarily a causal relationship between the two. So it may be true that psychotherapy is beneficial in some ways, but patients being treated for depression can not rely on psychotherapy alone to improve social functioning and must develop relationships and practice being social, benefitting from the support of, and connection with, close
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