We Aware You: Depression, symptoms and how it is often confused with other things
Marilyn Monroe, Alexander Mcqueen, Lee Thompson
Young, Mindy McCready, Meena Kumari, Devdutt, Jiah Khan, Pratyusha Banerjee
and lastly, Sushant Singh Rajput. These are some famous people we know who
struggled depression and lastly died because of it.
In this article we’ll see what depression is, what
are the symptoms, how it is often confused with other mental illness, what some
other kinds of depression are, what the treatment for the depression is and how
to deal with it.
INTRODUCTION
Mental health is the most ignored area in the field
of Medical, and especially in India. In India we either never talk about mental
health or we get confused over the terms of mental health.
But this is one of the reasons why every 1 out of 5 person is suffering from mental health in India. A survey has showed that 70% of teenagers are suffering from mental health in India. But still nobody wants to talk about this topic. Going to the psychiatrist for a treatment is often made fun of, and that is the reason why Mental illness is considered as a taboo.
Now coming to depression, depression is often
confused with other issues like grief and anxiety disorder. But what is
depression?
Depression is a mental health disorder in which you
feel constantly sad and there’s a loss of interest in activities which you
used to like before. A person under depression also has a feeling of low self
esteem and guilt.
Depression can lead to other emotional and physical
health issues and can affect the ability of function at work and at home.
SYMPTOMS:
·
Feeling
Sad
A person under depression is
consistently sad or has a depressed mood. There might be no reason for him to
feel so but still there’s like a hole in heart which reminds the person all
time.
· Lost interest
The person under depression doesn’t
feel like doing anything, he often loses the interest in activities he once
enjoyed.
· Weight loss or Weight gain
Appetite of the person under
depression changes a lot, due to that a lot of people lose their weight and
many people gain their weight.
· Change in the sleeping routine
A lot of people, under depression,
have trouble sleeping and some people often complain that they sleep too much
in this phase.
·
The
feeling of always being tired
People under depression often face
fatigue and they always feel the lack of energy.
· Fidgety
People under depression are often
found to be fidgety, like short movements while sitting at one place or
continued pacing.
· Change in speech
People often find themselves
stuttering or speaking way too slowly than before, under depression.
· Difficulty in concentration
People often find themselves zoning
out in the situation where they should focus, like studying, writing, reading,
or working.
· Thinking of Death
Lastly, people often think of death under
depression. Sometimes they think how would death feel like and sometimes they
think of reaching death.
Now talking about how depression is often confused
with other things, for instance grief and anxiety.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DEPRESSION AND GRIEF
Sometimes a person feels a wave of sadness crosses
his emotions, sometimes it’s because of heartbreak, sometimes from failure,
sometimes from a loss of your favorite things and sometimes loss of a person
related to you. Often when a person experiences a loss gets sad a lot and due
to this people consider themselves of getting ‘depressed’.
But getting sad is a lot different from having a
major depression. Grieving is natural to all, even an animal grieves if it
losses someone. In fact both in grief and depression there is a high intensity
of sadness, but still these both are different in several ways, like:
·
Depression lasts longer than grief.
·
In grief, people often get happy
memories mixed with sadness. But in depression there are less chances of a
person thinking something positive for two weeks.
·
In depression, a person has low self
respect, the person often considers himself worthless. Whereas it is not
important to feel worthless when a person is in grief.
·
Thoughts of suicide. A person in
depression thinks of death, it may be like thinking how the death would feel or
thinking of committing suicide. But if we talk about grief, a person won’t
think of killing himself while feeling sad for a short amount of time.
Both grief and depression may co-exist, but the
intensity of sadness will be much higher than ever. It generally happens after
the death of a loved one or getting failed in the target of life.
But it is important for a person to know if he’s
depressed or just sad. If he knows the difference between the two then he must
seek for a treatment if the case with him is the former one.
As said before many people who are sad often think
that they are depressed as well, and many of them start the self treatment of
depression. So it is important for such people to know as what is the
difference between the two, the medication of depression when a person is not
suffering from it, can be harmful for physical and mental health.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY
There is a very thin line of difference between the
depression and anxiety. The main difference is that the former one is a single
illness and the latter one is a group of many conditions.
Depression is a single mental illness, although it
has a lot of symptoms and a lot of consequences it is still considered as a
single illness, whereas anxiety is a group of conditions also called as
generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).
Anxiety may or may not include sadness in its
feature and a lot of time it is due to a phobia or fear of doing something.
Another reason of anxiety could be the awkwardness of doing something which a
person gets uncomfortable with. The third reason of anxiety is panic disorder,
often a person panics in some circumstances which leads anxiety.
The common feature in anxiety and depression is
having a low mood of lack of interest in doing things which a person used to
find a lot more interesting earlier. The feelings like, self esteem,
helplessness, guilt and suicidal thoughts are common in both depression and
anxiety. But in anxiety a person feels himself in the edge of falling apart and
often gets irritated.
And if we talk about some common physical symptoms
of depression and anxiety, those would be, tiredness, lack of concentration,
fidgety, and difference in sleeping pattern. But in anxiety the additional
would be, panting, tensed muscles, a fast heart rate, sweating dizziness. And
depression would have slower movements and weight changes as its additional
physical symptoms.
COMMON TYPES OF DEPRESSION (Besides major depression)
1.
Persistent
depressive disorder
When a person feels low for more
than two years, but the intensity doesn’t reach the major depression, it is
then called persistent depressive disorder. It is often referred as “dysthymia”.
And if we talk about how less intense it is than the major disorder then we can
say that a person suffering from dysthymia has the ability to perform his day
to day duties unlike the person under major depression.
2.
Seasonal
affective disorder
Some people often get depressed
when the winter comes. People gets confused with the term SAD and ‘winter
blues’ but there is huge difference between them. If asked to explain what is
SAD then in simpler terms we can say that it is a kind of major depression but
it strikes only in the winter that for a short amount of time. The treatment of
SAD would be similar to the treatment of clinical depression.
3.
Perinatal
depression
This type of depression is
common with the pregnant women or the
women who just delivered a baby. It may be a major depression or a minor
depression. This often happens during the midstage of pregnancy and the first
12 months, after a woman delivers the baby. Again, it is often gets confused
with the ‘baby blues’, but it is a lot different from it as baby blues is often
because of the tiredness which a woman gets during pregnancy or after the
delivery.
4.
PMDD
This kind of depression is common with women. It is
often referred as PMS as well (premenstrual disorder). This happens between the
ovulation and end when the menstruation starts. People often take it lightly
but this is actually a serious issue which requires medication.
FACTORS AFFECTING DEPRESSION
There are many factors which lead a person to get
depressed. If not, they may surely play a role when a person gets depressed.
Some of them are,
1.
Genes:
Depression
often runs in genes, so it is not surprising that this factor affects when
something disastrous happens in the person’s life and he gets depressed.
2.
Biochemistry:
This
is the chemical reaction which happens in brain which may affect a person who
gets easily depressed.
3.
Personality:
Some
people with low self esteem often get depressed because of their own
personality. It is not always important for something to happen to cause
depression to them.
4.
Environmental
factors: Season like fall and winter often play a major role
when a person gets depressed. And not just the season environmental problem
like deforestation may also affect a person’s mental health. There are several
ways environmental factors play a role in a low mood of a person, for an
instance, the pandemic COVID 19.
TREATMENT FOR DEPRESSION
a.
Medications:
Often
a person under depression when goes to a a psychiatrist gets the prescription
of antidepressant pills. But it’s not like you’ll go to the psychiatrist and
he’ll just give you the medicines and it’ll get better. The person is asked if
the symptoms have continued over two weeks, if yes, the person gets some tests
done to confirm if he’s really depressed and after that some more physical
tests to make sure it is not because of some other physical issue like
thyroids. After the person gets diagnosed a doctor may prescribe the person
with some medicines which may help in his depression and it is usually asked to
continue the medicines for 6 months after the person sees the improvement in
his mental health.
b.
Psychotherapy:
Psychotherapy
or talk therapy often helps people in mild depression. The experienced
psychiatrist asks the people to talk about the problems the person is facing
and help them while just talking. When the mild depression changes into major
depression the antidepressant pills are also prescribed to the patient while
continuing the psychotherapy. Also the psychotherapy is often done while sitting
alone with the patient but it often requires a family member or a close friend
of the patient to accompany him while the whole therapy.
c.
Electroconvulsive
therapy: When no therapies work for the person who is under
major depression then the last steps to treat it is the Electroconvulsive
therapy. The therapy requires a person to get an anesthesia and then the person
is gets some electric shocks to his brain to help the nerves in the brain. An
ECT is often done only two or three times in a week. Only 6 or 12 sessions are
required to help a person under depression. Unlike shown in some bollywood
movies the treatment is less painful and more effective.
SELF HELP AND COPING
There are several things which can help a person to improve his mental health while under depression. Some of them would be:
i.
Regular
physical workout
ii.
Having
a healthy diet
iii.
Avoiding
alcohol
iv.
Meditation
v.
Reading
books
vi.
Talking
to the family and friends
vii.
Writing
down your feelings
CONCLUSION
Depression is major mental health issue which
requires serious care and treatment. People often take the word depression as
if it’s nothing but a joke, but for some people it may lead to death. After the
case of Sushant singh Rajput, many people are showing their concern regarding
mental health but it would be better that people in reality can stop treating
mental health problem as taboo. Depression is often confused with grief and
anxiety and people start taking medicines even if they are not suffering from
it, so it is important for the people to know what depression is and how
important it is to get diagnosed before the self treatment.
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