Depression: Symptoms, Causes, and Effective Treatments
Depression
What is Depression?
Depression means different things to different people. Depression can be a symptom (as when a person says, ‘I feel depressed’), a sign (when someone observes, ‘he looks depressed’), or a diagnosable disorder. When we diagnose depression, we mean a disorder of sufficient length, with specific symptoms and signs, that substantially interferes with a person’s functioning or that causes great personal distress or both.
It is important to separate depressive disorders from everyday ‘blues ‘or sadness, which are not depression. People with the blues or normal grief may experience short lived symptoms of depression but usually continue to function almost normally and soon recover without treatment.
Depression requiring treatment, affects:
- Mood
- Thinking (Cognition)
- Bodily function
- Behaviour
Depression is often a recurring disease until we treat the underlying cause behind it. Depression usually comes back as a secondary phenomenon behind those untreated causes such as low self-esteem, Trauma, anxiety, guilt, underachievement, unrealistic family expectations and interpersonal issues and complicated and unattended grief.
Treatment:
A thorough evaluation is required for diagnosing Depression disorder and often includes an assessment by a Psychiatrist and a clinical Psychologist. Treatment consists of mainly Medications and Psycho-social management.
Why Emoneeds?
Because we support you in your journey to reduce your relapse and help you with lasting recovery by following provisions:
- Help You Manage Negative Automatic Thoughts And Negative Core Beliefs
- Long Term Support Throughout Your Mental Health Journey
- Daily Cognitive Remediation Activities [Crt Program]
- Handling Medication Compliance
- Catching Early Warning Signs
- Daily Feedback Calls
Treatment can usually manage the most serious symptoms and minimizing the associated discomfort. Emoneeds provides you a platform to seek professional individual and family support to help you prevent Relapse.
Bipolar Disorder FAQ's
The answer is No! Though lack of sleep plays a role in causing distress, but alone it cannot cause depression. Studies suggest that lack of sleep, that results from other medical comorbidities can intensify the illness. Chronic presence of insomnia can also act as an important sign of depression. Common triggers of depression might include:
- Any kind of psychosocial distress.
- Family history of depressive illness.
- Major life events such as moving out of the old place of stay, graduating or retiring, etc.
- Chronic and major illnesses, such as Cancer, Parkinson’s disease, HIV, etc.
- An abnormal reaction over the loss of a loved one because of death, divorce, or separation.
- Interpersonal disputes or social exclusion from family and friends.
- Substance abuse.
The answer is YES! Having experienced one or more episodes of major depressive illness, surely puts a person at an increased risk of having future episodes of similar type. But NOT everyone, who has recovered from depressive illness will suffer from it again. In some cases, psychosocial stressors cause depressive illness, and sometimes it is triggered by major life events, chronic illnesses, or a combination of both the factors.
Depressive illness, in some patients can also trigger for no particular reasons as such. Getting proper treatment is crucial for the complete recovery and also, in helping prevent relapse for future episodes.