When you seek care for depression, you may think that all that is needed is a doctor to prescribe a pill, or someone to talk to once a week. While medication management and talk therapy can be integral parts of residential depression treatment, they don’t represent the whole picture. Holistic depression treatment incorporates healing the body and the mind, and residential depression treatment programs like the ones offered at THIRA Health can be what you need to make a difference in your healing journey.

Holistic treatment: a body-mind approach for healing

Depression affects your whole life. It can impact your mind, your body, your relationships, how you eat, your sleep, and more. For the most effective depression treatment possible, finding a residential depression treatment program that takes a more holistic approach—incorporating things like mindfulness, art therapies, nutritional support, exercise, effective medication management, and targeted psychotherapy tailored to your needs—can be key to lasting healing.

But what makes up a holistic treatment program for depression? In this blog, we’ll review the key building blocks to a program that will truly provide you with opportunities to heal.

Nutritional therapy in depression treatment

Diet is key to well-being. You need to eat every day, and the building blocks of your body and mind come from the foods you eat. These key nutrients help your mind and body function, and mental and physical health can suffer when you aren’t able to eat a nutritious diet. Depression often alters eating patterns, and the loss of nutrition can make symptoms even worse.

All of these losses around nutrition can increase the symptoms of depression. Working with an intensive depression treatment program that includes nutritional support, either in the form of nourishing meals for residential treatment and partial hospitalization programs, or guidance from a nutritionist or dietician for outpatient therapy, can help rebuild your physical and mental resilience in the face of challenges.

Mindfulness as part of intensive depression treatment

Mindfulness is integral to adjusting our perceptions of ourselves and the world around us. It can help shift us from a state of rumination, worry, and despair into a state of acceptance, calm, and more balanced thinking. Integrating mindfulness into the daily programming for residential depression treatment through meditation, yoga, breath exercises, and DBT skills modules focused on staying present can all support decreasing the impacts of depression.

When you struggle with depression, your mind will try to pull you away from the present moment. Mindfulness draws your thoughts away from fear about the future, worry about what will happen next, away from hopelessness and thoughts of worthlessness, and out of rumination about what has happened in your life. Integrating mindfulness practices into residential depression treatment can create a healing space within your mind, alongside the healing space of the therapy room.

Exercise as mental health treatment

Exercise releases a host of neurotransmitters that boost one’s mood, and it has been shown to be as effective as other depression interventions when it comes to alleviating symptoms. Integrating exercise into a holistic mental health treatment plan can boost other treatment methods enormously. Exercise can also be a lot of fun! It can be easy to lose a sense of fun when getting started on depression treatment, and exercise like yoga, walking, running, swimming, or weight training can add some fun back to your life.

It can seem daunting to start an exercise practice while you’re stuck in the depths of depression. Seeking out a residential treatment program that incorporates exercise can make getting started easier for you. Exercise, like nutrition, is a net good for your body and mind, so having extra support to develop an exercise practice can be key to capitalizing on the healing benefits.

Art therapy for mental health treatment

Art therapy, or making use of creative expression to help heal from depression, has been shown in research to be highly complementary to other depression treatment techniques. Being able to express your inner feelings in a way other than words can help you embrace your feelings, process, and release them. Art therapy adds physical movement, emotional introspection, and concentration on a task in the present to depression treatment, tapping into the strengths that all of these bring to those working to heal.

Psychotherapy for depression

Psychotherapy is an integral part of residential depression treatment. For therapy to be effective in a holistic depression treatment program, it has to be the right type of therapy. One such modality that has been shown to be highly effective for depression is dialectical behavior therapy (DBT).

DBT integrates mindfulness, already shown to be highly effective for depression, with developing skills around emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness. It is structured to include individual counseling and group counseling. With DBT you have space to work on healing the root causes of your depression and a built-in community for support and skills practice. These skills, as well as the healing that individual counseling provides, can help you direct your thoughts and your life in a way that serves you, instead of being driven down the dark road of depression.

Holistic residential treatment for depression can help

Finding a therapist, clinic, or group that offers holistic yet intensive depression treatment can significantly increase your chances of finding healing and peace. Looking at the bigger picture of the body and the mind by adding mindfulness, exercise, nutrition, creative expression and the right kinds of therapy creates support for your whole self.

THIRA Health has many holistic healing programs, including residential treatment for adults and teens, partial hospitalization programs, and intensive outpatient programs for the morning and in the evening. Connect with THIRA today to see how these different programs can support you on your journey to a life worth living.