Depression is an illness that makes a person feel sad and hopeless much of the time. It's different from feeling a little sad or down. Depression can be treated with counseling or medicine, or both.

Healthy thinking also can help prevent or control depression.

• If you have thoughts of harming yourself or others, you need to see your doctor or therapist right away. Healthy thinking can help with depression. But you may also need medicine and therapy.
• Negative thoughts can make depression worse or can be a symptom of depression.
• Cognitive-behavioral therapy, or CBT, is a type of therapy that can help you replace negative thoughts with accurate, encouraging ones.
• Changing your thinking will take some time. You need to practice healthy thinking every day. After a while, healthy thinking will come naturally to you.

 What is healthy thinking?
 Why is healthy thinking important to helping you cope with depression?
 How can you use healthy thinking to cope with depression?
 Where to go from here