Am I “Depressed”?

Mental health is as important as our physical health. Mental health can preserve the ability to enjoy life. One should maintain an equal balance between life activities, responsibilities, and efforts to achieve psychological resilience.

In today’s life when we all are fighting from a deadly disease COVID-19 in our homes, some of us may have lost our loved ones and may suffer from mental conditions. Conditions such as stress, depression, and anxiety can all affect mental health and disrupt a person’s routine.

What is depression?

Depression is a mood disorder also known as major depressive disorder or clinical depression, which includes a combination of biological, psychological, and social sources of distress. Increasingly, these factors may cause changes in brain function, by altering the activities of certain neural circuits in the brain.

It affects the way you feel, thinks, and behave. This involves a constant feeling of sadness, grief, and loss of interest in day to day activities. Some people get confused between depression and mood fluctuations. Mood fluctuations are totally normal which we experience in our day to day lives. Any events, such as loss of a job, death of loved ones, bullying, interruptions, any past happenings may lead to such moods which later can turn into depression, and if turns into severe depression it may lead to suicide.

A major cause of suicide is mental illness and also caused by long term depression. People who feel suicidal are engulfed by darker and painful emotions and choose death as their only way out, by not understanding the fact that committing suicide is not a permanent “solution” to get out of their misery.

Before moving towards its symptoms let’s just take a look, how people are getting affected with depression every year. Depression is the second leading cause of years lived with a disability worldwide. More than 5 percent of the population suffers from depression in the Middle East, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Caribbean. Meanwhile, depression is reportedly lowest in East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia. The most depressed country is Afghanistan, where there are more than one in five people are suffering from the depressive disorder

Symptoms of depression:

• Feel irritable and restless
• Lose pleasure in life
• Overeat or stop feeling hungry
• Headaches, cramps ,
• Digestive problems.
• Have sad or “empty” feelings
• Bummed out mood during most of the day, especially in the morning
• Feel  tired or have a lack of energy almost every day.
• Feel worthless or guilty almost every day.
• You have a hard time focusing, remembering details, and making decisions.
• You sleep too much almost every day or you can’t sleep. 
• You have no interest in many activities in day to day life.
• You think often about death or suicide.
• You feel restless or slowed down.
• You’ve lost or gained weight.

Why do we get depressed?

There are no particular reasons why we face depression in our lives. Some of them are biological things like our genetics, brain chemistry, and hormones. Then there are some which related to the environment, including bright lights, daylight and seasons, or sometimes in our surroundings, sometimes it happens because of overthinking.

• Genetics: 3p 25-26 is linked to severe periodic depression. There is clear evidence that in more than 800 families’ were suffering from recurrent depression. Scientists believe that as many as 40 percents of those with depression can trace it to a genetic link.

• Brain chemistry: Neurotransmitters are natural chemicals in the brain that helps facilitate communication between your nerves and the cells. Examples are norepinephrine and serotonin. These chemical imbalances in the brain occur when there is either too much or too little presence of certain chemicals.

• Hormones: One can get into a depressive state when there are certain changes in hormone production or functioning. One can get these disorders during menopause, childbirth, thyroid problems.

How depression varies in different genders?

Depression in men: men are less likely to acknowledge their feelings they begin with hopelessness, also more likely to experience symptoms such as anxiety, aggression, reckless behavior, substance abuse. Instead, of opening to others, they tend to complain about mood swings, fatigue, irritability, sleeplessness, and loss of interest in work and hobbies.

Depression in women: women are more likely to acknowledge these experience and some of its symptoms are common like feeling guilty, excessive sleeping, overeating, and sudden weight gain. Depression in women also put a great impact on their hormonal factors like early or late arrival of the menstruation cycle, during pregnancy, and menopause. In fact, 1 out of 7 women experiences postpartum depression during childbirth.

Depression in kids: depression in kids are acknowledge with mood swings, irritability, anger, agitation, and regular sadness these are some noticeable symptoms of depressed teen. They may also complain about headaches, stomach aches, or other physical pains that may lose interest in their normal activities and may try to isolate themselves from the outer world. 

How to cure depression?

Firstly, it is really important to understand that you can overcome the depressive phase only if you stop thinking about all the negativity and try to find positivity around yourself. These are a few things we should change in our lives:

• Get a daily routine: It is a high time to introduce a good routine to your life because depression can deconstruct the structure of your beautiful life. Setting a good daily schedule can help you get back to your life.

• Setting small goals: during the depression the state of mind makes us believe that we cannot accomplish anything. This makes you feel bad about yourself. It is really important to make small goals in the beginning and accomplish them.

• Reward yourself:  It is also important after accomplishing the goals one must recognize them, all successes are worthy of celebration. When you achieve a goal, do your best to recognize it. This small celebration will help fight against your negative thoughts.

• Do something that you enjoy: depression leads to losing interest in all the activities, to fight back we should try a thing that makes us feel comfortable and happy. These activities lift your mood and help fight against depression.

• Spend time in nature: nature has a very powerful influence over depression, spending time in nature can help fight against depression. Hiking, walking in local parks, long drives, and help boost depressive mood.

• Spend time with loved ones: depression makes you isolate yourself from friends and family. To overcome one should spend as much time as possible with loved ones. Talking and sharing can help you express your feelings which comforts you and lift your mood.

• Eat healthily: food plays a very essential role in our health, if you are in taking the right nutrition then it may help against depression. There is clear evidence that OMEGA-3 AND FOLIC ACID are helpful against depression.

• Try to exercise: exercising can help fight against depression, during exercise a chemical is released “endorphins” which boosts blood flow into our body, which helps in feeling good. Regular exercise helps the brain in positive ways.  Try to get enough sleep: depression makes it difficult to sleep and a little sleep may turn the situation even worse. One should make changes in their lifestyle by taking a small step, sleep in time and wake early in the morning and follow the same pattern.

One should take control of their lives and try to stay motivated even in stuff hours. Try to stay around the loved ones and create happy memories in their lives.

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