How to Deal with Depression & Anxiety: List of Top 10 Best Natural Antidepressants

Although everyone can experience sadness from time to time, not everyone will suffer from depression. Chances are that you don’t have a good understanding of what living with this mental illness is like if you’ve never been depressed.

Depression is like a big black dog that feeds on your fear and anxiety. The more you’re depressed, sad, and anxious, the larger the dog grows — until it eats you alive.

The illness affects both our mood and our ability to feel, think, and function. It dampens feelings of pleasure, makes a person less able to bond with other people, limits creativity, and washes away hope in the worst scenario.

Depression is also often accompanied by deep emotional pain, experienced by the person suffering from it, but also its close family and friends.

While you may think that depression is just an excuse for somebody’s laziness or a lack of will for change, it just shows how much depression is misunderstood.

When you’re depressed, you genuinely believe that change isn’t possible for you; that the overwhelming darkness will stick with you forever.

In this article, we leave no stone unturned when it comes to coping with depression. We’ll elaborate on the symptoms, diagnosis, treatments, and natural remedies.

Looking for ways to cope with depression? Here we’ve prepared some common questions and answers — from diagnosis to available treatments.

How do I know if I’m depressed?

Common signs of depression in adults include feelings of irritation, inability to focus, sadness, emptiness, anxiety, frustration, anger, and feelings of guilt. Individuals with depression may also experience fluctuation of appetite and loss of interest in previously enjoyed activities.

What causes depression?

Trauma, such as the loss of someone close, as well as changes in life circumstances, relationship problems, and genetics can all contribute to the development of depression. People who abuse alcohol and drugs are more likely to suffer from depression. The illness can occur spontaneously or run in families.

Is depression a lifelong condition?

Depression doesn’t have to be a lifelong condition. It can be successfully treated with behavioral therapy and available treatments that help reduce symptoms and improve the overall quality of life. That being said, depression can reoccur, sometimes caused by the same factors that spurred its development in the first place. If a patient feels better, they may want to discontinue the treatment, which can result in a relapse.

According to statistics, 17.3 million, or 7% of American adults in the United States experienced at least one major depressive disorder in the past year — as reported by the National Institute of Mental Health.

Conclusion?

Depression is one of the most common mental illnesses in the United States (1).

Furthermore, according to a 2021 State of Mental Health in America report, conducted by a non-profit organization Mental Health America, an additional 460,000 people (0.15%) had suicidal thoughts between the 2016-2017 calendar year and the 2017-2018 calendar year (2).

On a positive note, there are many effective treatment options for depression. If you’re looking for a way to cope with your illness, you’ll need to take a holistic approach, as there’s no magical pill that would cure it right away.

Raising awareness about the need to treat depression is paramount considering that roughly two-thirds of patients with depression didn’t receive the care they need — that’s the data from the journal Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment (3).

If sadness isn’t the independent cause of depression, then what is? How to tell the difference between a bad period and depression?

According to the American Psychiatric Association’s updated Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), which is a manual for psychiatrists to diagnose mental conditions, diagnosis with major depressive disorder is based on careful observation of a patient for at least two weeks.

If a person has experienced at least five of the following symptoms most of the day, nearly every day, for the said period, you may receive a diagnosis of clinical depression (4):

• Feelings of being empty and worthless
• Loss of interest in activities and people that you once enjoyed
• Dramatic fluctuation in your appetite or weight not related to eating habits
• Frequent fatigue
• Difficulty concentrating and making decisions
• Recurring anxiety
• Insomnia
• Recurrent suicidal thoughts

One of the major symptoms that are used to diagnose MDD is a constantly low mood or a loss of interest or pleasure.

The symptoms must also not be caused by substance abuse or an underlying medical condition, such as nutritional deficiencies, thyroid disorders, or brain tumors.

Of course, if these symptoms appear temporarily, you may not have depression at all. However, when they make it difficult to function normally, it’s an indicator that you may be developing a major depressive disorder.

The best way to start coping with depression is to consult your doctor, a psychiatrist, or a psychotherapist. If you don’t feel like visiting a clinic to receive a diagnosis, Google up “clinical depression” and you’ll find links to a clinically approved depression test known as the PHQ-9 patient health questionnaire.

The test is short and easy to take – you can immediately notice if your score suggests you may have depression.

One reason depression can be difficult to diagnose is that the symptoms can vary widely between individuals and sometimes can be accompanied by atypical symptoms.

For example, people with depression may show it by acting as aggressive, resentful, or irritable. These behaviors can be indicative of “hidden” depression, as stated by a 2017 report in Psychiatric Times (11).

This may seem surprising at first, but when you consider several other contributors, such as alcohol or drug abuse, or childhood trauma, you can see the bigger picture.

Individuals with anxiety disorders are at a higher risk for developing depression — it also works the other way round. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, around 60% of people who have anxiety will also experience symptoms of depression; the same applies to people with depression demonstrating symptoms of anxiety (12).

Experts link the above phenomenon to a genetic predisposition (13).

If you have depression, you may also show psychosomatic symptoms, meaning that instead of showing itself as a mood disorder, the prevalent symptoms may be very general things like aches, dizziness, headaches, back pain, or digestive issues (14).

As you can see, it’s often difficult to figure out whether depression is causing the physical symptoms, or if it’s the opposite.

It’s not yet understood why some people develop depression and others don’t. The illness can occur spontaneously, without any specific triggers. It’s also backed by science that once you’ve experienced one depressive disorder, you have a higher risk of having another later in life.

In a study published by Psychological Medicine, the authors found that more than 13% of people who recover from their first episode of clinical depression experience another episode within 5 years. 23% have it within 10 years, and 42% within 20 years (15).

To cope with depression, it’s worth taking another look at this condition. Psychiatrists today consider depression a “bio-psycho-social” illness that is most likely caused by overlapping psychological, physiological, and social factors (16).

Here are some of the most common risk factors for depression:

There’s a large gender gap when it comes to depression. Women are nearly twice as likely to suffer from depression as men, according to the National Center for Health Statistics (24).

This disparity is probably affected by hormonal and biological factors, considering that only women have premenstrual and postpartum depression. The same is true for antepartum (or perinatal depression) — which occurs during pregnancy. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists estimates that perinatal depression affects one in seven women (25).

Women also have higher chances of developing seasonal affective depressive disorder, depressive symptoms in polar disorder, and persistent depressive disorder (26). It’s uncertain what causes such rates, but researchers speculate that environmental factors, such as peer pressure and different stressors that the modern world places on women, are the driving factor.

Others hypothesize that men and women have similar depression rates, but women are more willing to seek help than men.

So, how do both genders cope with depression?

Below we explore some of the most common treatments.

If you suspect that depression blocks you from living a normal life, talking about how you feel and discussing treatment options with qualified health professionals is the first step to successfully coping with depression.

There’s sound evidence that people with depression who go after treatment will finally find the much-desired relief in cognitive-behavioral therapy, medication, lifestyle changes, or a combination of all these three factors (27)

Lifestyle Modifications for Depression

Practicing mindfulness and exercising yoga can alleviate depression and stress that heightens it. You can also use journaling, arts, or alternative treatments like acupuncture or light therapy to cope with depression.

Diet modifications can reduce inflammation and help your brain absorb the nutrients it needs to maintain optimal functioning.

In a 2019 randomized controlled study, the authors found that self-reported symptoms of depression diminished significantly in just three weeks in young adults after they ditched highly processed carbohydrates in favor of a Mediterranean diet. In contrast, people who didn’t implement these modifications didn’t notice any changes in their depression scores (28).

There are several types of psychotherapy for depression outlined by the Society of Clinical Psychology: (29)

Antidepressants are prescribed to alter the brain chemistry in a way that affects how neurons communicate with each other. The exact mechanism behind their mood-elevating properties is yet to be fully understood, but the fact is that these medications often work for some people (30, 31).

Are Antidepressants Safe?

Antidepressants are generally considered safe if taken under a doctor’s supervision. The dose and the schedule should be circled in a way that relieves the symptoms without causing any negative reactions.

All antidepressants can have side effects, but some have a higher risk profile than others. Not all of them will be effective against your depression, so you may need to try several different medications, or a combination, prescribed by your doctor before you can cope with depression.

Most antidepressants don’t act right away. It usually takes at least two weeks before you see results. For some people, the benefits of the drugs may not be experienced until they have taken them for as long as three months (32).

Abrupt cessation of your treatment may lead to a medical condition called antidepressant discontinuation syndrome (ADS). ADS is characterized by a wide range of responses, including flu, headaches, weight gain, stomach pain, nausea, and low mood (33).

It’s also worth noting that antidepressants aren’t addictive, unlike other substances that can be abused, such as alcohol, opioids, and barbiturates. People don’t have antidepressant cravings because they don’t get high from them and they aren’t compulsively abused.

If you’ve tried at least two types of antidepressants but to no avail, you may suffer from treatment-resistant depression (TRD). TRD is a serious illness that has been linked to suicidal ideation and suicide attempts.

Nearly one-third of patients with TRD attempt suicide in their lifetime — which is twice the rate of their treatment-responsive counterparts (35).

If you’re diagnosed with TRD, you may want to try some of the following alternative treatment options:

According to a research paper from 2017, up to 60% of people who take prescription drugs for depression experience an improvement in symptoms within several weeks — but the remaining 40% of people do not respond to such treatments (41).

This is where natural antidepressants may help. However, as with conventional antidepressants, the effects may vary between individuals and are not guaranteed to provide relief from severe depression in everyone.

How Does CBD Work for Depression?

When you take CBD oil — the most popular form of CBD, which is an oily hemp extract — the CBD starts interacting with the endocannabinoid system (ECS), known as the master regulatory network.

The ECS is present in all systems and organs throughout the body; it promotes and helps maintain homeostasis between essential physiological and mental processes — including mood, memory, pain perception, appetite, sleep cycles, emotional processing, immune function, and more.

CBD has a similar structure to the body’s endocannabinoids. Although it doesn’t have an affinity with any of the cannabinoid receptors (CB1 and CB2), it does affect the way they process endocannabinoids, including anandamide (the bliss molecule).

CBD signals the ECS to produce more endocannabinoids while slowing their breakdown; as a result, these endocannabinoids can circulate in the body for longer — promoting calmness, a sense of balance, elevated mood, and better response to stress (54).

On top of that, CBD can:

Does CBD Interact with Conventional Antidepressants?

CBD is a potent inhibitor of Cytochrome P450, which is a system of enzymes that metabolize around 60% of pharmaceutical medications, including antidepressants (56).

It’s the same mechanism that’s used by grapefruit — hence a grapefruit warning on certain meds.

In short, CBD can compromise your liver’s ability to metabolize these drugs, resulting in too low or too high concentrations of the drug in your system (depending on the type of interaction). This may lead to either subtherapeutic effects or toxicity, both of which can be bad for your health.

Consulting a holistic doctor experienced in CBD and cannabis use will help you establish the right routine for your CBD oil supplementation and reduce the risk of potential interactions.

Related:

• Best CBD Gummies & High Potency Chewables: Which Hemp Edible Products To Choose?
• CBD Capsules Near Me: Finding The Best CBD Oil Pills Online
• Best CBD Oil for Anxiety: How CBD Helps with Stress & Depression

Contrary to a popular misconception, depression reaches far beyond regular sadness and baby blues. It’s a serious mental illness involving a wide range of symptoms, including both physiological and psychological reactions.

Diagnosing depression can be a hard nut to crack, as some individuals may hide it by showing some symptoms that can be interpreted as aggression, irritability, or a stubborn refusal to change the negative behavior.

Fortunately, as more resources are fueled into researching potential treatments for depression, people are receiving more tools to cope with this health condition before it takes over their lives and interferes with their daily functioning.

From psychotherapies to conventional medications and natural remedies — there’s a whole world of treatments that will help you cope with depression long-term rather than just masking the symptoms.

If you’re up for trying alternative depression treatments, we highly recommend CBD oil. CBD uses a multifaceted mechanism to combat the symptoms of depression as well as some of its underlying causes, such as endocannabinoid deficiencies.

Just make sure to consult your options with a doctor who is knowledgeable about using complementary treatments for depression. Doing so will help you figure out the right dosage and avoid potential cross-interactions with other medications.