Coping With Depression in the Military

Video Transcript

"I'm Dr. David Thomas, I'm a practicing psychotherapist with the Whitford Thomas Group here in Tampa, Florida here to discuss coping with depression in the military. Coping with depression in the military wouldn't be much different than coping with depression in other fields. The only way that would be a little concerned about with depression in the military is what is the job. But interestingly I would be somewhat concerned about what kind of job and the job duties that other people might have who might come into my office and want to be treated for depression as well. And certainly you'd want to look at what is the job function, what are the job duties of the individual in the military. Clearly if they're in a combat kind of environment, but even in intelligence, I mean there's probably a lot of positions that mood is going to be important for effectiveness of job performance. So certainly if you're in the military and you're suffering from depression you want to seek help as soon as you can. What is the help that you seek? Well certainly you can see a psychiatrist but if you don't have a long history of depression, you haven't experienced a lot of depression in your previous years, it's quite possible that depression is primarily driven by thinking, you're stressing yourself about certain life events, you have a sense of helplessness and hopelessness that you've created for yourself. So if in fact you're experiencing depression and you're in the military, seek out a cognitive behavior psychotherapist. It's what we practice at Whitford Thomas Group and the emphasis is that thinking drives feelings and behaviors and since depression is a feeling, it has a whole host of behaviors and symptoms associated with it, then certainly we want to teach you how to identify the thinking that's driving those depressed states and what you can do to change that. The thinking we get most concerned about is the irrational and illogical thinking because it tends to not only create or drive depressed states but also tends to maintain them. So again depression in the military is not much different than depression in other fields or vocations. You'd want to be concerned about it as far as your job performance and to seek out assistance as quickly as you can. And again if you have not experienced a lot of depression in your past, I would probably go first with a cognitive behavior therapist. Hopefully this information I provided to you regarding depression in the military is helpful. From Tamp, Florida, I'm Dr. David Thomas."