Researchers At The National Institute Of Mental Health And Across The Country Are Dedicated To Womens Mental Health Research
Researchers continue to study depression to improve the way this medical condition is diagnosed and treated. For example, NIMH researchers are currently working to understand how and why changes in reproductive hormones trigger mood disorders, including postpartum depression, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, and perimenopausal depression.
NIMH scientists are conducting a large number of research studies with patients and healthy volunteers to better understand why some women are at higher risk than others, and how they can translate these findings into new treatments or new uses of existing treatments.
Whats The Difference Between Grief And Depression
Given that the primary symptom associated with depression is sadness, it can be easy to think of grief or bereavement as depression. But grief is a natural response to specific experiences, such as the end of a relationship or the death of a loved one. While you might feel regret or remorse, and you might withdraw from usual activities if you are experiencing grief, youre unlikely to feel the overwhelming sense of worthlessness, thoughts of self-harm or suicide, and other symptoms of depression. Another important difference is that in grief, painful feelings usually come in waves and are often mixed with positive memories.
American Family Physician
What Is The Therapy For Child Depression
The therapy for child depression is cognitive behavioral therapy . Therapists help kids feel welcome and supported. They have kids talk about what they think and feel. They may use stories, play, lessons, or workbooks. These tools can help children feel at ease and get the most from CBT. When possible, a child’s therapy includes their parent.
If a child has gone through a loss, trauma, or other difficult events, the therapy will include things that help a child heal from that, too. And if a parent is dealing with their own loss or depression, the child’s therapist can help them get the care and support they need.
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How Is Mdd Treated
When life feels impossible with MDD, know that there are treatment options available for you, regardless of your circumstance. There might be a bit of trial and error to find the perfect treatment for you, but recovery is possible . According to the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, nearly 80% of those who receive treatment for MDD start to feel better in four to six weeks. The light is at the end of the tunnel, and the right combination of treatments will get you there.
What Is Major Depressive Disorder
MDD is more than simply feeling sad, experiencing grief, or being drained of energy. Those feelings are totally valid, and like most feelings, theyll eventually pass. MDD is an often-debilitating mental illness that presents as a cluster of depressive symptoms. For most people, and you cant just snap out of it.
While melancholy and exhaustion are part of depression, there are other symptoms to look for, including losing interest in things you once enjoyed, trouble sleeping, sudden crying spells, withdrawing from others, hopelessness, thoughts of self-harm or suicide, and more. Depressive episodes vary in severity and duration, but they must last for two weeks or more to qualify for an MDD diagnosis.
Many people with clinical depression do their best to conceal symptoms from the people around them. They may feel vulnerable and embarrassed for showing weakness, or worry that their friends and colleagues might judge them or just plain ghost them. Remember: MDD is not a negative attitude, a character flaw, or a sign of weakness.
Some people with depression cant recognize it in themselves. Theyre not necessarily imperceptive. Symptoms can pop up gradually and before you know it, you havent been to work, showered, or changed out of pajamas in three days. Classic depression attributes like hopelessness and suicidal comments are easy to spot, but many signs are less obvious.
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Seek Support For Symptoms Of Depression
Depression is often not recognised and can go on for months or even years if left untreated. Its important to seek support as early as possible, as the sooner a person gets treatment, the sooner they can recover.
Untreated depression can have many negative effects on a persons life, including serious relationship and family problems, difficulty finding and holding down a job, and drug and alcohol problems.
There is no one proven way that people recover from depression. However, there is a range of effective treatments and health professionals who can help people on the road to recovery.
There are also many things that people with depression can do for themselves to help them recover and stay well. The important thing is to find the right treatment and the right health professional for a persons needs.
What Are The Symptoms Of Anhedonia
While researchers are still debating whether anhedonia can truly be categorized into two main types, some literature suggests that this mental health issue can be divided into social anhedonia and physical anhedonia.
Social anhedonia is often defined as an increased disinterest in all aspects of interpersonal relationships and a lack of pleasure in social situations. Physical anhedonia is an inability to feel tactile pleasures such as eating, touching, or sex.
The symptoms of anhedonia can include:
- social withdrawal
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What Does It Mean Not To Care About Anything
Are you tired of feeling like you don’t care about anything? This feeling can be a sign of clinical depression and other mental health conditions.
Although it might seem like something you can handle on your own, the truth is that not caring about things can cause problems in relationships, make it difficult to achieve goals, and affect multiple areas of your life including work, school, and daily functioning.
If you don’t care about anything, then you may lack the motivation to pursue your goals. For example, if you don’t care about school or your future, then why even bother going? Or, if you don’t care about what others think of you, then you might begin making impulsive decisions that don’t line up with who you really are.
It can be completely normal to feel this way from time to time. Life is full of ups and downs, and everyone experiences down periods where they don’t feel motivated to do things that they normally enjoy doing.
The key difference between feeling temporarily unmotivated and a more serious problem is how long it lasts and how severely the feeling affects your mood and behavior.
Looking After Someone Who Has Depression
If you’re close to someone with depression, their condition can affect you too. Your relationship, and family life in general, can be strained, and you might not know what to do or how to help.
Talking about the situation can help. Finding a support group, or talking to other people in a similar situation, can make it easier to cope. If the condition is causing difficulties in your relationship with your partner, you could contact a relationship counsellor who can talk things through with both of you.
When suffering from depression, men are less likely to ask for help than women. They’re also more likely to turn to drugs and alcohol to cope with the symptoms.
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Difficulty Concentrating Remembering And Making Decisions
Depression can interfere with a persons cognitive abilities. They may have trouble focusing or concentrating on personal or professional matters. Additionally, they may find it difficult to make decisions, even those involving seemingly minor, everyday choices.
People with depression may also find that they cannot remember things as well as they did previously. They might forget appointments or commitments and not recall things that they said or did recently.
Life Events And Depression
Research suggests that continuing difficulties, such as long-term unemployment, living in an abusive or uncaring relationship, long-term isolation or loneliness or prolonged exposure to stress at work can increase the risk of depression.
Significant adverse life events, such as losing a job, going through a separation or divorce, or being diagnosed with a serious illness, may also trigger depression, particularly among people who are already at risk because of genetic, developmental or other personal factors.
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Seeing A Doctor About Depression
Big changes in your life, like bereavement, losing a job, or even having a baby, can cause symptoms of depression. You’re also more likely to experience depression if you have a family history of depression. However, it’s also possible to become depressed without there being an obvious reason.
You can learn more about depression causes here.
Take Care Of Yourself
Feeling like you dont care about anything often extends to not caring about yourself either. But a poor diet, lack of sleep, limited exercise, and other unhealthy habits can make feelings of apathy and lethargy even worse. Prioritize self-care and spend time each day making sure that you have what you need to feel healthy and well.
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Avoiding Friends And Family
Do you find yourself ducking social situations because you feel like you just cant muster the energy to hold up your end of a conversation? Is it hard to go to a family gathering and smile like youre having a good time? People with depression tend to socially isolate themselves, which studies say is twice as harmful to physical and mental health as obesity.
Helping A Suicidal Friend Or Relative
If you see any of the above warning signs:
- get professional help for the person
- let them know they’re not alone and that you care about them
- offer your support in finding other solutions to their problems
If you feel there is an immediate danger, stay with the person or have someone else stay with them, and remove all available means of committing suicide, such as medication.
Over-the-counter drugs such as painkillers can be just as dangerous as prescription medication.
Also, remove sharp objects and poisonous household chemicals such as bleach.
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What Are The Major Signs Of Depression
Because depression is complex and affects so many systems of the body, it has many manifestations, and which ones are most prominent can vary from person to person. According to the latest edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, widely used as a roadmap to diagnosis, depression can be considered an illness when at least five symptoms occur together for at least two weeks. Symptoms include:
Feelings of sadness, emptiness, or hopelessness
Irritability, angry outbursts, or low frustration tolerance
Loss of interest in or ability to enjoy usual activities, from sex to sports
Sleep disturbance, whether inability to sleep or sleeping too much
Fatigue and lack of energy everything feels effortful
Appetite disturbance, including loss of interest in eating and weight loss or overeating and weight gain
Anxiety, agitation, and restlessness
Slowed thinking, moving, or talking
Feelings of worthlessness and guilt, a focus on past failure, self-blame
Difficulty concentrating, remembering things, and making decisions
Recurring thoughts of death
Physical pain such as headaches or back pain that has no clear cause.
Big Changes In Weight
Rapid weight loss or weight gain is associated with depression. Depression can either zap your appetite to the point where you rarely feel hungry or cause you to overeat.
While its perfectly normal to crave comfort foods when under stress, if you experience noticeable changes in your appetite that trigger weight loss or gain, you should seek an evaluation.
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What Are The Symptoms Of Depression And How Is It Diagnosed
The NHS recommends that you should see your GP if you experience symptoms of depression for most of the day, every day, for more than 2 weeks.
Doctors make decisions about diagnosis based on manuals. The manual used by NHS doctors is the International Classification of Diseases .
When you see a doctor they will look for the symptoms that are set out in the ICD-10 guidance. You do not have to have all of these to be diagnosed with depression. You might have just experience some of them.
Some symptoms of depression are:
- low mood, feeling sad, irritable or angry,
- having less energy to do certain things,
- losing interest or enjoyment in activities you used to enjoy,
- reduced concentration,
You may also find that with low mood you:
- feel less pleasure from things,
- feel more agitated,
- find your thoughts and movements slow down, and
- have thoughts of self-harm or suicide.
Your doctor should also ask about any possible causes of depression. For example, they may want to find out if youve experienced anything traumatic recently which could be making you feel this way.
There are no physical tests for depression. But the doctors may do some tests to check if you have any physical problems. For example, an underactive thyroid can cause depression.
On the NHS website, they have a self-assessment test which can help you to assess whether you are living with depression: www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/clinical-depression/overview/
You Have A Short Fuse
If the slightest mishap sends you into a rage, or grouchy is your new normal, you may be depressed. In a 2013 study published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, 54% of people with depression reported feeling hostile, grumpy, argumentative, foul-tempered, or angry. “Once youre on the negative side of the house, you’re more accessible to the rooms where other negative moods hang outirritability, frustration and anger,” says Simon Rego, PsyD, associate professor of clinical psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and director of psychology training at Montefiore Medical Center. “You’re not directly there, but it’s a short walk.”
An estimated 16.2 million American adults has experienced at least one depressive episode.
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Depression And Drugs And Alcohol
“Drowning your sorrows” is actually a bad idea when it comes to depression. Alcohol is categorised as a “strong depressant” which can make depression worse, and drinking or taking drugs to cope can lead to a downward spiral by having a negative affect on other parts of your life.
There’s evidence that cannabis can cause depression, particularly in teenagers, even if it helps you relax.
Less Optimistic Than Others
There is a theory that people with depression may display a trait called depressive realism. This means that they may be more accurate in their view of events and the control they have over those events than people without depression.
Being more realistic or pessimistic than others may be one sign of depression, especially if the person has other possible symptoms of depression.
When a person trails off during conversations or loses their train of thought, this can indicate issues with memory and concentration. Such issues are a common symptom of depression.
An older 2014 study suggests that these difficulties with concentration and focus can worsen the social impact of depression by making work life and personal relationships more challenging.
Additionally, a 2018 narrative review notes that cognitive dysfunction is a key aspect of major depressive disorder . This can significantly affect a persons social life, return to work, and workplace productivity.
, more severe depression was associated with more severe sexual dysfunction. This dysfunction included trouble with sexual function, desire, and satisfaction.
There are several reasons why a persons libido might decrease when they have depression. These include:
- loss of interest in pleasurable activities, such as sex
- fatigue and low energy levels
- low self-esteem
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What Does It Mean To Be Clinically Depressed
The term depression is used in common conversation to cover a wide range of mood disruption, from momentary sadness to prolonged hopelessness. Clinical depression is a medical term that is reserved for the more serious forms of the disorder, also called major depression. People who are clinically depressed experience a number of symptoms In addition to unremitting sadness or disinterestsuch as sleep problems and appetites disturbanceand their thinking is so relentlessly negative that their ability to carry out everyday functions is seriously impaired, and they cannot envision a brighter future.
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How Is Depression Treated
The first step to getting treatment is to see your GP. If your GP thinks you have depression, they will talk to you about the treatments they can offer.
What are talking therapies?
Talking therapy is a general term to describe any psychological therapy that involves talking. You may also hear the terms counselling or psychotherapy used to describe talking therapy.
Therapy should offer you a safe, confidential place to talk about your life and anything confusing, painful or uncomfortable. It allows you to talk with someone who is trained to listen attentively and to help you improve things.
Talking therapy often takes place face to face. But you may also be able to have therapy over the phone, by video call or online. There are different types of talking therapy that you might be offered. These include:
- cognitive-behavioural therapy,
- mindfulness based therapy, and
The type of therapy you are offered will depend on the cause of your symptoms and their severity. Therapies may also have different levels based on how long or intense the treatment is.
Ask your GP about therapy if you think it might help. Some of these therapies will be available in your area. Some areas offer a self-referral option for NHS talking therapies. Please refer to your local Improving Access to Psychological Therapies service to find out about this option.
You may also be able to access therapy privately or through your employer in an Employee Assistance Programme.
How can antidepressants help?
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