subject: What is Depression Primer and What Are the Facts? [print this page] Being sad for a while is one thing, but being depressed takes sorrow to a different level. Depression is a pervasive sadness that clutches you by the collar and transforms your life as it slips a burlap sack over your head. You start to adjust to life with this sack on, and soon you sway every decision based on that sack blinding you to your true abilities.
Depression is specified as 2 or more weeks of emotional and physical lethargy. Clinical depression is a month or more of depression. It could feel like living in hell itself with no hope for improvement. Symptoms include changes in appetite and sleep practices, loss of energy and interest in things that used to be enjoyable, feelings of worthlessness, difficulty concentrating or making decisions, and ideas of death or suicide.
Annually, approximately 20.9 million American grownups out of the total population of 306 million are affected with mood disorders, including major clinical depression, dysthymic disorder (chronic low grade sadness), and bipolar disorder. Depression has become one of the most common medical problems in the USA. It happens twice as frequently in adult female then adult male. There are no figures available to calculate the number of people suffering silently with mild or moderate clinical depression, but researchers estimate that two-thirds of those affected don't get any help. Those who become depressed tend to abuse cigarettes, alcohol, and/or prescription drugs a lot frequently than those who are not depressed, so those who will not help themselves might also be dealing with addiction problems.
Depression is an anticipated reaction after experiencing a significant negative life event, such as the death of a loved one, a romantic break-up, a change in social life or social status, wound, or long term sickness. Depression tends to run in families, so it could have a genetic cause as well. But the depression that creeps up on you for no apparent reason and hangs around for a long time is not normal, and the root of it requires to be exposed.
Marjorie Wallace of SANE, a British mental health charity, comments, Depression is a complex and challenging condition that remains poorly understood, with as many as one in 10 people with severe depression taking their own life.
Around the world, middle aged people consistently are at higher risk of depression than younger people or the elderly. Research indicates that 44 is the age at which we are most vulnerable to depression. The term midlife crisis was coined because so many people worldwide experience a depressive phase during their 40s. Encouragingly, says Andrew Oswald, a professor and economic expert at the University of Warwick, by the time you are 70, if you are still physically fit, then on average you are as happy and mentally healthy as a 20 year old.
How effective is depression medication?
I have helped thousands of people to get of depression on their own by teaching them depression self help formulas.
Lots of people mistakenly trust that drugs are the solution for depression while the reality is that psychotherapy is usually much more effective for treating depression on the long run.
Medication is only effective as long as you are using them but if you were depressed because of your lack of ability to match life problems then sooner or later your depression will get back again.
What depression truly is?
Depression always has a reason and if you think that you are depressed for no reason then recognize that the reason is just buried in your subconscious mind because your mind found that it's too painful to make you aware of it.
How would you feel if you suddenly felt useless, unloved or even not that intelligent? Of course it would hurt and that's why sometimes our subconscious mind selects to suppress the reasons instead of showing them to us.
So there is always a reason for depression and your first step in helping yourself feel better is to know that reason.
Try to recollect your feelings before you got depressed, record the changes that happened after then and observe how your mood modified from good to the worse. It may take you some time but in the end you will find that something has changed.
