What is Depression

Every human being has to experience mood swing in his/her different phases of life. Feeling or experiencing good or low mood is considered to be normal since such feelings are needed to motivate a person to stay lively and to being responsive to the surroundings. Without ups and downs in life people will not get the stimulation to strive for achievement or accomplishment, they will be totally predictable and robotic. So experiencing changing mood is necessary to add variation in life.

However, people should not be confused with the term depression with the mood changing. There is a very clean difference between depression and elevated mood.

The difference between mood changing and depression could be described as the difference between normal experience and illness as mood changing does not always lead people to develop depression due to ups and downs in life.

The term depression is generally used to illustrate a variation of moods that ranges from low spirits to a severe problem. So developing of depression is an indication of beginning of illness and ending of experiencing normal feeling, which obstructs with normal living style. That’s why depression is often referred as the “depressive illness”. A very well known definition of depressive illness was given by Sir Aubrey Lewis in the 1950s is “People are sad, and ill with their sadness”. This definition states that not only low mood but also people’s illness are responding in the way their bodies are functioning.

Depression is such an emotional feeling by which every person has to go through in the various respect of life. However every person does not have the same capabilities to handle or bear the difficult emotional situation of life in the similar way. So some people become very depressed or someone can face the situation tactfully. A person could develop the depressive illness due to following reasons:

• Family problems
• Marital difficulties
• Health problem
• Sleeping disorder
• Job failure
• Interval of study life and so forth reasons.

These situations can trigger various physical and mental illnesses even sometimes lead someone to commit suicide or require hospitalization. Depressive illness can attack at any age, any gender like male, female, children, old man, and old women. Although some studies have shown that women develop depression more than man. Depression is found to be very much common in the people’s life. Because every person has ups & downs in his/her personal life as well as in professional life. If anyone will develop depression then he she may be experiences changes in his/her behavioral characteristics, thinking style, sleeping pattern, living style, study etc. There are certain symptoms which are the signs of developing depression, which are as follows: 

• Anxiety
• Loss of weight
• Lack of interest in every work
• Lonely feeling
• Lack of interest in food
• Appetite change
• Poor health
• Loudness
• Shame
• Phobia etc.

But the symptoms and signs of depression or depressive disorder may vary according to age and gender. For example, a depressed child or a depressed teenager behave in a different way and experience the different symptoms than a depressed adult. Suppose, the depressed child may refuse to go to school or he/she develops the fear of losing his/her parents. Reversely a man or a woman, who is suffering from depressive disorder, experiences the signs of anger, sadness, and irritability change of appetite and so on. Sometimes the effect and outcomes of depressive disorder could be assorted according to the particular society or culture. Some countries have higher rates of depression. Especially according to the research in U.S.A, depression hits every 1 people out of 10 people and it attack 10 million people in every one year. That does not mean that depression is only taking place in USA, in fact depressive illness is spreading in all over the world.

But the good news is that in spite of its all drawbacks, depression is easily treatable, though sometimes situation could be worst. Till to date medical treatment, counseling, psychotherapy and other therapy like cognitive behavioral therapy, Interpersonal therapy, electroconvulsive therapy or even some self help tactics have proved very successful for recovery of depressive illness. Even some patients have very good record of recovery having only talking treatment from general practitioner. The mild depression can be successfully treatable with the General Practitioner and their prescribed medicines can sought out general problems such as appetite, sleep disturbance, anxiety etc.

In order to get the proper treatment, it is very much important to identify the type of depression. Depression ranges from mild to major. So if the mild depression will be treated as major depression then it may bring reverse effect, especially in case of children. The depressed child should firstly be treated with General Practitioner and some general counseling. Otherwise it may badly affect their soft mind and they carry in their whole life as a nightmare.

Depression is common as cold or other normal disease. So dear readers, do not worries, take the right treatment, go to your General Practitioner and try to recover first with self help tactics before applying any medical treatment.