The client reached out to our Veda center in Delhi with complaints of experiencing sadness, anxiety, binge drinking of alcohol as a coping mechanism along with self-harm tendencies and suicidal ideations. The client mainly presented with symptoms of Major Depressive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Throughout her stay with Veda, she was able to develop a healthy coping mechanism and aimed to regain control of her life.
Patient Profile: A 24-year-old female struggling with depression, anxiety, and alcohol consumption.
Holistic Interventions:
The primary course of treatment was mainly psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy. Weekly psychiatric consultations and prescribed medications helped regulate the client’s mood and bring her back to baseline. Psychotherapy was also provided regularly to help the client maintain a schedule and follow the therapeutic regimen.
Dialectical behavioral therapy was used as the primary course of treatment including other modalities such as cognitive behavior therapy and rational behavior therapy to deal with cognitive distortions. These modalities helped the client improve their self-esteem as well as distress tolerance and emotional regulation.
Daily yoga and mindfulness helped the client improve their physical and mental well-being. The client was able to learn to relax and deal with anxiety in a better and more effective way.
Sound therapy and art therapy sessions helped her express and ground herself like never before.
Regular nutritional consultations helped ensure that appetite was maintained and nutritional requirements of the body were not neglected.
Challenges Faced During Treatment
The client showed resistance to the therapeutic process on multiple occasions. Resistance is the opposition to the therapeutic process. The client was cooperative mostly but showed resistance while working on the deep-rooted pattern and cognitive processing.
The client’s resistance was addressed as a part of the therapeutic process. It was successfully addressed and the plan was modified to deal with learned helplessness that was seemingly occurring in the situation. Eventually, the client found the motivation to start working on herself as we moved past resistance.
Results & Success Indicators
The client developed a healthy coping mechanism to deal with the distress and anxieties of her life. She was able to follow abstinence from alcohol successfully. She learned different ways to deal with her self-harm tendencies. The ability to follow a schedule helped her regain control over her life.
Before & After Snapshot: ‘I thought it was impossible for me to get better. I felt helpless and lost. But I have realized things get better, you just need to keep trying.’
The treatment plan helped the client to feel more in control over her life as opposed to feeling helpless. She developed healthy coping mechanisms in response to her stress and was able to change her ways of dealing with the atrocities of life.
