Depression is a low mood that lasts for a long time, and affects your everyday life.
In its mildest form, depression can mean just being in low spirits. It doesn’t stop you leading your normal life but makes everything harder to do and seem less worthwhile. At its most severe, depression can be life-threatening because it can make you feel suicidal.
When does low mood become depression?
We all have times when our mood is low, and we’re feeling sad or miserable about life. Usually these feelings pass in due course.
But if the feelings are interfering with your life and don’t go away after a couple of weeks, or if they come back over and over again for a few days at a time, it could be a sign that you’re experiencing depression.
Are there different types of depression?
If you are given a diagnosis of depression, you might be told that you have mild, moderate or severe depression. This describes what sort of impact your symptoms are having on you currently, and what sort of treatment you’re likely to be offered. You might move between mild, moderate and severe depression during one episode of depression or across different episodes.
There are also some specific types of depression:
- Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) – depression that occurs at a particular time of year, or during a particular season.
- Dysthymia – continuous mild depression that lasts for two years or more. Also called persistent depressive disorder or chronic depression.
- Prenatal depression – depression that occurs during pregnancy. This is sometimes also called antenatal depression.
- Postnatal depression (PND) – depression that occurs in the first year after giving birth.
What’s it like to have depression?
- Everything feels empty and hopeless, depression may make you that there is no way out of your current situation. it leaves you empty and that there is no way to happiness.
- There is no low self-esteem, you may feel like you are worthless or a failure at everything. Like the universe is against you.
- You may likely dwell on negative past events and experiences and cannot see positive qualities in yourself.
- You may not enjoy the things that once gives you pleasure or you loved doing. Lost of interest in the things that makes you happy and feels nothing can make you happy.
- Concentration or focus becomes hard.
- Lost of appetite or over appetite, while some people may lost interest in food, some may find consolation in food, which may result into physical problems such as obesity, type2diabetes etc.
Causes of depression
There are several reasons about what causes depression. We all are different and are faced with various\different issues of life. Depression varies a lot between different people, for some people it could be a particular issue, while for some, it could be a combination of different factor.
Some causes of depression include;
- Childhood experiences; Our childhood experiences is the foundation and the most delicate aspects of our lives, that’s why we have to be careful of how we treat a child because whatever feeling we give to a child, stays with the child and may even define the behavior of the child later on in life. There is a good evidence that bad childhood experiences are likely to make us vulnerable to depression later on in our lives. These experiences varies; it could range from abuse; such as emotional, sexual and even corporal punishment, rejection, child neglect, the loss of a loved one, traumatic events, unstable family situation such as domestic violence and broken home etc. Difficult experiences during your childhood can have a big impact on your self-esteem and how you learned to cope with difficult emotions and situations. This can make you feel less able to cope with life’s ups and downs, and lead to depression later in life.
- Situation of life; Life happens to everyone and anyone, the only difference between us, is the time of “how” and “when”. You can find yourself into depression due to some of stressful, traumatic and unplanned situations in our lives, and often times we have no control over this situations. This could be, betrayal from a friend, or the end of a relationship, losing a job, experiencing some sort of delay, bereavement and even peer pressure etc.
- Physical health problem; Physical health problem can be in the form of visible and invisible disability.
- Visible disability are those disabilities that are open to the world, it’s glaring to every eye that can see. This could be, being partially blind, partially deaf, stuttering, amputations, autism, paralysis, down syndrome, stroke etc.
- invisible disability are those disabilities that are not visible, they are inside of us, inside our body. it can be challenging to know when someone has an invisible disability, as most of these people may be dismissed by their peers and society ass odd or off. these include; bipolar, diabetes, HIV, anxiety etc.
Treatment
Just like there are various treatment of different physical health problems, so also there are various treatment to different mental illness. One distinguish factor about mental health treatment is the fact that it involves YOU and YOU choosing your own treatment method.
There are various treatments that have been found to helped people with depression. These include;
- Self care: what this simply entitles is that you get yourself busy with something else, something different for whatever is making you depressed. It means channeling your focus, attention and “self” to positive feeling. It might be the first option, your doctor or even you offer to yourself. For example; you might channel your energy to your job, career, hobby, sport, or even a join a group of exercise class. However, this is more helpful to people with mild depression.
- Talking therapy: Talking therapy involves talking with someone, a doctor, a counsellor or a even a friend, depending on the diagnosis of the depression. Also, there are many different talking therapies; such as; Group based talking therapy, Interpersonal therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, behavioral couple therapy- [if you have have a long term partner, and your doctor agrees that it would be useful to involve them in your treatment]. However, this is also helpful to people with mild and moderate depression.
- Medication for depression: If self-help, cognitive behavioral therapy or physical activity have not helped you, you might also be offered an antidepressant medication, either on its own or in combination with a talking therapy. There are different types of antidepressant; such as; SSRIs, SNRIs, MAOIs and other antidepressant drugs.
Can friends and family help with depression?
YES, the support of friends and family can play a very important role in someone recovering from depression. Here are some suggestions for how they can help.
Be open about depression. Lots of people can find it hard to open up and speak about how they’re feeling. Try to be open about depression and difficult emotions, so your friend or family member knows that it’s OK to talk about what they’re experiencing. However, some people are scared of being judge by the people they love or sometimes too shy to express their feelings towards the people close to them.
Social media therapy groups
Social media has become one of the best and trending ways people entertain and help themselves. It’s benefits of reaching out to a large audience, having a direct connection with your audience etc cannot be over-emphasize. However, in terms of helping with mental illness, social media has become one of the best “Talking Therapy” media to help people battling with depression. There are so many certified counsellors and therapist on the social media space who help people with their various feelings and emotions.
