Introduction
Today, the world we live in is full of amazing technological marvels such as autonomous cars, drones, humanoids robots, and so on. In spite of all these remarkable advances, we don’t seem much happier. Measuring multiple facets of psychological well-being have become saturated while rates of suicide and depression have enhanced.
The technological progress doesn’t automatically reflect well-being but may make things worse. Technology has actually a lot to answer when it comes to depression. Often, the social platforms whose aim is to connect us create isolation in our lives. In fact, most of the last decade’s technological advancements have caused serious depression.
Fighting Depression With Technology
Luckily, technology has an incredible capability to alleviate depression. As many people around the world embrace technology, it has the potential to lift our spirits, help us handle our negative moods, and protect us from ourselves. Thus, technology should and can play a pivotal role in how we handle and eliminate depression. Now, let’s dig deeper into how technology plays a major role in eliminating depression.
Data
There are many digital tools present in the market to diagnose and eliminate depression. These advancements are making a huge difference in both general medical care and psychiatric care. Most of the major chronic diseases are made worse due to the presence of depression. So, getting to know the presence of depression and its intensity in a person will help in enhancing the quality of life.
Many online tools are connected directly to mobile phones are digital wearables such as iWatch. Mobile phones can be outfitted with sensors that can gather and transmit data in real-time on the physical markers of a person like respiration and heart rate, how much the person is exercising, where the person is, whether someone is committing cognitive mistakes, for instance, while typing or driving. Some apps utilize Wi-Fi for sending an alert and others are used for reading voice changes to determine how people are feeling.
The health professionals utilize these phones, tablets, or laptops for conducting simple real-time patient surveys. With the help of data obtained from these phones and other devices, the mental health professionals will be able to know the conditions of people cure them for depression. With the help of real-time surveys, the doctors will come to know of people’s eating and sleeping habits, and their feelings when they attend clinics.
Sound, Light, and Color Therapies
There is no shortage of approaches to fight depression with each of them having their benefits and drawbacks. Most of the depression cases today can be effectively treated with structured, brief forms of antidepressant and psychotherapy medications.
Chromotherapy (also known as colour therapy) has emerged as one of the safest and leading alternative therapies for depression. Different colours are used with colour therapy to evoke emotional, positive responses. Light and colour therapies are used frequently by health practitioners for promoting fatigue reduction, self-healing, and energetic realignment.
LSN (Light and Sound Neurotherapy) is one of the most advanced therapies for the treatment of depression. It involves a combination of sound and light to produce a favorable response from the brain. It is a drug-free and completely safe approach.
With smartphones gaining huge popularity, convenience and technology have merged to provide sound, light, and colour therapies with a home that is convenient and easy and enables users to tap into mobile technology for addressing depression. When sound, light, and colour therapies are easily accessible through mobile phones, it becomes highly effective in eliminating depression.
Everyone has their own tolerance, threshold, and desire for therapy. You can choose the one that is right for you from the available options. In addition, as the sound, light, and colour therapies are non-narcotic, non-invasive, and convenient, they can be used in conjunction with other methods.
TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation)
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, also known as TMS, represents a non-invasive way for brain stimulation. It utilizes a powerful electromagnet that should be placed outside the head targeting a particular component of the brain. A magnetic field as strong a normal MRI is turned on by the electromagnet and it lasts for less than half a millisecond.
The neurons in the brain that contribute to depression are turned on or off by this magnetic field. Doing this repeatedly will retrain specific circuits that you target to function properly on their own.
The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approved it for use against depression and it is being examined under different conditions. This approach for treatment is the first of its kind as it takes specific circuits in the brain and treats them for depression.
Conclusion
The above mentioned are the powerful ways of diagnosing and treating depression. Researchers are hoping that the research that is being carried out will come up with much-advanced techniques and tools which will be statistically valid, useful in terms of ergonomics, efficiency, and reliability, and that counter depression in a more effective manner.