How often have we heard people around us say “I am really depressed!”. What actually is depression? Can it be frequent? How can it be recognized?
There are many queries like the above lurking in our mind. Depression can be studied better under two categories: blue moods and depression. Both have similar symptoms but there is a vast gap in their treatments. We can go on and on about the causes, treatments and how depression differs in men and women: there is a lot of information on the net for this but the need of the hour is a clear distinction between blue mood and depression.
Everything that can go wrong will go wrong on a particular day/situation giving rise to a foul mood filled with sadness, disappointment, anger, frustration etc: this is categorized as Blue Moods. It may not persist for long and is relatively for a shorter period of time and is often related to an incident/situation in life like time management, getting passed over promotion or inability to handle office politics etc. Blue mood can be uplifted through re-visiting memories or hobbies or doing something that brings happiness.
Depression on the other is different as in an individual may feel sad and happy at the same time or under eat or over eat or have no consistent sleeping patterns or have frequent thoughts of suicide and many more. Depression creeps in slowly for a more permanent period of time and is also related to more severe incident/situation in life like bereavement, accident, loss of a relationship etc. It may not be easy to uplift the mood of a depressed individual through revisiting hobbies or doing something happy. The feeling is much deep rooted and hence requires in depth healing. This is the main reason that we usually seek the help of a counselor to identify depression. In cases of depression inclusive of suicidal thoughts, individuals are immediately referred to psychologist for medical treatment along with counseling.
Severity of depression can vary from person to person depending on their age and sex. Although the symptoms are same in both men and women, the response to depression is varied. On a common base depression can vary from major to psychotic to postpartum. Depression is a vast area of study because of frequent occurrences in the recent times. Although stress is the major cause of depression, its source can be drawn back to genetics along with several other life changing events.
As mentioned earlier men, women and elderly respond differently to depressive incidents. Women although experience frequent episodes of depression due to periodic hormonal changes, they are less prone to take drastic measures. This may be due to their willingness or ability to talk about their feelings of depression where as men are more prone to revert to drastic measures probably due to their negligence in attaining adequate help in time. In certain cases of elderly suffering from depression, it is often considered as ‘normal’ with age but in reality the depressive episodes may be due to the side effects of the medications that they are on and these episodes may come to light in earlier stages as the symptoms in elders are less intense.
Depression is an illness related to brain and needs to be tended to as early as possible. It is a reality which has to be faced with utmost care and affection by the people in the environment of the depressed individual.
Comments