What Is Depression?

     

Depression has been described as a universal and normal human experience.  Around one million Australian adults and 100,000 young people live with depression each year and on average, one in five people will experience depression in their lives.

Depression is hard to define and hard to predict.  It can strike anyone at any time regardless of age, gender, profession or culture.  Depression is a widely felt emotion that can become debilitating.  Often there is a great deal of shame attached to feeling like you´re not coping and fear that others will notice.  People with depression can find every day functions difficult to manage, and this can have serious effects on physical and mental health.

When a person is depressed, it affects both the body and the mind.  It disrupts some of the body´s most basic systems such as the hormonal system, central nervous system, sleep-wake cycle and immune system.  This disruption can sometimes make you feel unwell and out of sorts.
Signs and symptoms of depression include:

• Lowered self-esteem or self-worth. 
• Change in sleep patterns, that is, insomnia or broken sleep, or even sometimes sleeping too much.
• Changes in appetite or weight. 
• Feeling anxious. 
• Varying emotions throughout the day, for example, feeling worse in the morning and better as the day progresses.
• Reduced capacity to experience pleasure: you can´t enjoy what´s happening now, nor look forward to anything with pleasure. Hobbies and interests may drop off.
• Reduced pain tolerance: you are less able to tolerate aches and pains and may have a host of new ailments such as headaches or stomach pain that have no medical explanation.
• Changed sex drive: absent or reduced.
• Poor concentration and memory.
• Reduced motivation: for example it may not seem worth the effort to do anything, things may seem meaningless.
• Lowered energy levels.
• Feelings of helplessness.
• Thoughts of death and suicide.

People with depression very rarely experience just one of these signs, in fact most people report experiencing multiple signs.  If you  have any of these feelings and they persist for most of every day for two weeks or longer, and interfere with your ability to manage home, work or study, then you might benefit from talking to a professional about this and exploring what things you can do to overcome these feelings.