What is depression?
Being depressed is more than just being sad the definition of depression is the feeling of intense sadness coupled with a lack of interest and pleasure in daily activities, significant weight loss or gain, insomnia, or excessive sleeping over long periods. Depression is just one of 3 disorders in the depressive spectrum. The other 2 are Dysphoria and Depressive disorder. Just to define quickly, Dysphoria is an unusually elevated sad mood (often mistaken for Depression), Depression is an emotional state characterized by intense sadness, feelings of futility and worthlessness, and withdrawal from others. The depressive disorder involves periods of symptoms in which an individual experiences an unusually intense sad mood for at least two weeks.
Let’s look at the numbers
Depression is a common illness worldwide, with an estimated 3.8% of the population affected, including 5.0% mong adults and 5.7% among adults older than 60 years. Approximately 280 million people in the world have depression. Locally, the depression rate is 6.7% in Ghana Not to bore you with statistics because it is very likely that you, my dear reader have felt as you have been depressed at least once in your life. Hopefully, by the end of your read, you would be able to tell the difference between being sad and being depressed, symptoms of depression, and what action to take when we get depressed or we are to encounter someone with depression.
Depression is a serious sickness like cancer or malaria and it can be fatal. There are chemical reactions that go on in the brain to produce certain hormones that make us depressed. Depression can cause a lot of other issues, as said in my previous blog You’re probably not sick.
According to the DSM-5, the manual psychologists and doctors use to diagnose mental disorders, you have depression when you experience five or more of these symptoms for at least 2 weeks:
- Your mood is depressed for most of the day, especially in the morning.
- You feel tired or have a lack of energy almost every day.
- You feel worthless or guilty almost every day.
- You feel hopeless or pessimistic.
- You have a hard time focusing, remembering details, and making decisions.
- You can’t sleep, or you sleep a lot, almost every day.
- You have almost no interest or pleasure in many activities nearly every day.
- You think often about death or suicide (not just a fear of death).
- You feel restless or slowed down.
- You’ve lost or gained a substantive amount of weight you did not intend to.
- You feel cranky and restless
- Lose pleasure in life
- Overeat or stop feeling hungry
- Have aches, pains, headaches, cramps or digestive problems that don’t go away or get better with treatment
- Have sad, anxious, or “empty” feeling
This is quite a long list to conclude very easily that one is depressed. There are also as many causes of depression. Researchers have not been able to pinpoint the exact causes of depression, but have assumed and found out that a combination of, brain structure, brain chemistry, hormone levels, and genetics.
Depression is a clinical disease and should not be taken lightly. If you know anyone suffering from depression, encourage the person to see a Clinical Psychologist or speak to a Clinical professional.
Reference
Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation. Global Health Data Exchange (GHDx). http://ghdx.healthdata.org/gbd-results-tool?params=gbd-api-2019-permalink/d780dffbe8a381b25e1416884959e88b
American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-IV-TR, American Psychiatric, 2000.
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