Prevention of Depression using Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy

When it comes to Mental illness why do we relapse and why do we recover ?
It is said about depression for example that we can spontaneously relapse into illness and spontaneously recover despite the intervention of medication and psychotherapy.
But can we also influence when we relapse and when we recover. Better still can we influence whether a relapse occurs at all. With Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Mindfulness meditation the focus with depression is on prevention. The trick is to become aware of the dysfunctional thoughts before they take hold of our emotions, for example the idea is to see your anger or sadness off in the distance and divert your attention away from  it. This can be achieved by taking notice of your bodily reactions such as changes in the breath or heart rate accompanied by vigorous detection of negative thoughts and feelings. When you learn to detect these thoughts and feelings you will have achieved the first major step. The reason why this is so difficult is because these thoughts occur without us being fully aware of them. They occur in a repetitive pattern everytime we are faced with stress or misfortune often without us fully realising it. For this reason they are often called automatic thoughts. Stopping these thoughts altogether is difficult but even reducing them will have significant impact on you mood and can prevent or reduce depression. The process of prevention is worth summarising as follows

• Become aware of your dysfunctional thoughts as early as possible. If they are making you feel depressed or angry then more than likely they are dysfunctional. Bodily changes such as breath, heart rate or perspiration are good hints of changes in thoughts and emotions.

• Recognize that these thoughts exist but divert your attention away from them and then attend to the moment to whatever is currently happening.

• Depending on the stressful event and your tendency to ruminate your automatic thoughts will tend to come back. Don’t be concerned about this, the mind will always drift. When it happens again gently divert your attention away from these dysfunctional thoughts and back to the present moment

It may take some time and practice but you will find that if you follow these steps repeatedly as required there will be a significant improvement in your mood and you will be less likely to slip into depression.