Everyone feels sad sometimes. We all go through periods of doubt, despair and emotional pain. That’s part of a normal and healthy life, and these feelings typically fade over time. But when they linger, or begin to interfere with your everyday life, they could signal depression.
Depression is more than just “feeling the blues.” According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it s “a serious medical illness and an important public health issue.” Depression is a leading cause of disease, disability and injury for both men and women. It not only causes pain and suffering for those with depression, it can burden their families, friends and co-workers. The CDC estimates the economic costs of depression, including workplace costs, direct costs and suicide-related costs, to be more than $200 billion.
[See: Am I Just Sad — or Actually Depressed?]
Because depression is a medical condition, it can be diagnosed, treated and, in the vast majority of cases, managed successfully — even cured. Too many people, however, still don’t understand that basic fact. “There is still a lot of stigma around psychiatric issues, including depression, that makes people think that [the] way they are feeling is somehow their fault or their parent’s fault,” says Dr. James Potash, chair of the psychiatry department at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. “The truth is that depression is a treatable medical illness. Although it can be hard to recognize and has some invisible qualities, it is a disease process of the brain, and as a disease, it is nobody’s fault, just as it is no one’s fault they get cancer or asthma.”
The key to successful treatment is often getting it early, before the condition worsens, so knowing what to look for can help patients recognize something is amiss and seek help.
Types of Depression
Depression, which is also referred to as clinical depression or a depressive disorder, can be broken into certain types, according to the National Institute of Mental Health:
— Major depression is defined as having symptoms of depression most of the day, nearly every day, for at least two weeks. These symptoms disrupt your ability to work, sleep, study, eat and enjoy life.
— Persistent depressive disorder, or dysthymia, is diagnosed when the patient experiences symptoms of depression for at least two years.
— In addition to these classifications, there are other forms of depression that develop under specific circumstances:
— Perinatal depression is major depression that afflicts women during pregnancy or after delivery. This is also known as postpartum depression.
— Seasonal affective disorder, or SAD, is a depressive state tied to changes of season. It typically begins in the late fall and early winter, and lasts until spring or early summer.
— Psychotic depression is severe depression combined with some form of psychosis, such as delusional thinking or visual or aural hallucinations.
There are more examples of depressive disorders, such as disruptive mood dysregulation disorder (which typically occurs in children and adolescents) and premenstrual dysphoric disorder. And depression can be one phase of bipolar disorder, in which the person experiences alternating, extreme modes of euphoria and depression.
[See: Seasonal Affective Disorder: 8 Ways to Feel Better.]
Symptoms of Depression
Not everyone experiences depression in the same way. Indeed, depression is often a vague, hard-to-pin-down collection of symptoms that vary from person to person, gender to gender and age group to age group. Nevertheless, there are common signs of depression that everyone should learn to recognize.
The American Psychiatric Association lists the following symptoms in its diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder. For a diagnosis of major depression, a patient must experience five or more of these symptoms for a continuous period of at least two weeks. These symptoms must be present every day or nearly every day, and they must cause significant distress or problems in day-to-day functioning:
— Feelings of sadness, hopelessness, depressed mood.
— Loss of interest or pleasure in activities that used to be enjoyable.
— Change in weight or appetite (either increase or decrease).
— Change in activity: being more — or less — active than usual.
— Insomnia (difficulty sleeping) or sleeping too much.
— Feeling tired or not having any energy.
— Feelings of guilt or worthlessness.
— Difficulties concentrating and paying attention.
— Thoughts of death or suicide.
Depression Symptoms in Certain Groups of People
That list is the official diagnostic model of depression. But it doesn’t really get at all the various ways depression can present itself. In fact, certain groups of people may experience different symptoms.
Take children and teens, for example. Younger children may exhibit bouts of sadness, irritability, clinginess, worry or aches and pains. They may also refuse to go to school or be underweight. Teenagers may also feel sad and irritable, worthless or angry, or exhibit poor school performance. They may also sleep too much, lose interest in activities like sports or music, begin harming themselves or abuse drugs, alcohol or food. Young adults ages 18 to 25 are 60 percent more likely to have depression than people ages 50 or older, according to the National Alliance of Mental Illness, or NAMI.
Older adults may experience memory difficulties, personality changes, physical aches and pains, fatigue, loss of appetite, sleep problems, loss of interest in socializing and suicidal thoughts, especially in older men. There is still a belief that depression is a normal part of growing older. It is not, and should be taken seriously by loved ones who notice these behaviors.
In general, men and women are different regarding depression. Women are 70 percent more likely than men to experience depression, according to NAMI. Their symptoms are more likely to include sadness, worthlessness and guilt. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to feel tired, irritable and sometimes angry. They may underperform at work, lose interest in outside activities, suffer sleep disruption and engage in reckless behavior such as drug or alcohol abuse, erratic driving or dangerous sports.
Men are also far more likely to miss these signs of depression and suffer silently, without seeking professional help. What’s more, they are somewhere between four and eight times more likely to complete suicide, according to Dr. William Pollack, an associate professor of psychology in the psychiatry department at Harvard Medical School, and a consultant at Cambridge Hospital and McLean Hospital in Boston. While females are more likely to attempt suicide, “When you interview them, most females admit [their suicide attempt] is a cry for help,” Pollack says. “Males use more violent means of suicide, and my argument is they actually want to die. It is not a cry for help, it is a sense of failure that is so intolerable to their self-esteem, they want to be dead. As one patient who failed to commit suicide said to me, ‘I failed at this as well.'”
[See: 11 Simple, Proven Ways to Optimize Your Mental Health.]
The message for males, and indeed for everyone, he says, is that “there is no shame in being depressed. The shame is letting it go too far, and you lose your life and hurt those around you.”
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How Do I Know If I Have Depression? originally appeared on usnews.com
