Depression. People love that word depression. Depression can describe a bad day for some, for others depression is when things are just not working out.
For the women that come to Brookhaven, depression is much, much more than just sadness or unhappiness. Depression has no age limit. The ladies that come to Brookhaven have had a depressed mood symptom lasting for most of the day for a number of weeks or months, and in some cases years. Many of the women who are depressed have a number of other symptoms they are dealing with everyday.
Many depression symptoms can be confused with personality difficulties. When a woman is depressed she may be seen as unmotivated, lazy, or unable to deal with the real world.
For depressed women it is very important that you learn, understand and know what depression does to your life, and how that impacts the ones you love. You can learn to treat depression as an illness and not something that is wrong with your personality.
It is important to learn how to re-establish a living rhythm that is right for you. In residential treatment for depression you will go on a journey of self-exploration along with full medical diagnosis and support. Modern culture values, thinking, much more than how we are feeling, and when we miss those powerful emotional messages to ourselves we start to internalize feelings. Women are often taught not to listen to themselves, but rather to the needs of others and their community.
When depression starts, for some, it feels like being frozen under a blanket of snow after an avalanche with no way out — alive but capable of nothing but existence. It feels like there is no hope. At Brookhaven we work towards reaching you and helping you come out of that frightening place. We use a holistic approach to help melt that paralyzing blanket away. Careful diagnosis, medication management and therapy are used in this process for depression as needed.
Depression destroys self-esteem and confidence. Guilt and shame are one of the reasons many women do not get the correct help with the illness of depression.
Please feel free to take our depression survey if you feel that you or a loved one may have depression.