Positive Activities, Effective Ways to Handle Depression

Switch on positive activities can serve as an effective drug and unnecessary cost prohibitive for people who suffer from depression. It is delivered by the Riverside and the Duke of the University Medical Center.

Positive Psychology Interventions for Treating Major Depressive Disorder and Minor, a paper in the August 2011 edition of the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, quoted by Science Daily, proposes a new approach to treating depression with Positive Activity Interventions (PAI). 

 

PAI is doing a positive activity, practicing optimism, and trying to find wisdom in the events being experienced. This new approach had the potential to be effective in dealing with cases of depression, where they do not need to consume drugs, lower cost, relatively less time-consuming and promises better results, nor are there any side effects.  

Based on data from the National Institute of Mental Health, more than 16 million U.S. adults (about 8 percent of the total population) suffer from depression, either severe or chronic. Overall, the World Health Organization estimates that depression affects more than 100 million people worldwide.

Although antidepressant drugs can save lives of several individuals, drug therapy is only successful about 30 percent. Even after trying 2-4 different medications, a third person remains depressed.

Over the last several decades, social psychology research in aspects of happiness, optimism, and gratitude, has yielded much useful information in the intervening positive activity on mood and well-being.

The main advantage of the positive activities is that they are more easily performed and inexpensive, yet highly effective.