What is Depression?

Clinical depression can be distinguished from simply feeling blue or out of sorts. There are certain objectively identifiable symptoms that come into play when a person is clinically depressed:

How badly and continually has your mood affected your sleep patterns? Are you suffering from insomnia or are you forever sleeping?

Do things that you once enjoyed - including your family and friends - no longer bring you any happiness?

Are you grouchy and cantankerous, exploding into argument with hardly any provokation?

Do you have repeated thoughts of death or suicide. Do these often become overwhelming and all-consuming?

Everyone will feel upset and grieve from time to time. This is a normal part of life. However, clinical depression is insistent and stubbornly resilient. Friends can tell you to snap out your gloomy mood, but if you are truly in a depressive state, it is not within your power to comply. Often too it is challenging for you to pinpoint a specific reason for your agony. You know that you are deeply distressed, irritated or angry, and can give thousands of good reasons to justify your mood, but you're not truly sure about what the basis of the pain is!

So are you suffering from depression or just going through some rough sailing?

Life changing events and misfortunes, like a death in the family or a divorce, can hurl you into a dark chasm of anxiety and gloom. This is to be expected. Such pain is not to be diagnosed as an illness, as there is good reason for the negative emotions and feelings of dread. Not all pain and fear is a mark of illness. Healthy individuals get anxious and fearful too. The difference is that their fears are realistic.

Grieving over the loss of someone you love or over the breakdown of a relationship is also normal and healthy, and should not be avoided. Indeed, geninue depression is sometimes the end result of when the grieving process has been cut short and not allowed to run its course!

So how do we know when mental angst has become a depression that needs treatment? It's when the painful emotions persist beyond the normal grieving period, or when they become all encompassing, or when there is no obvious foundation for the pain, that it is time to look for professional help.

If you are seeking to give yourself a self-diagnosis, ask yourself if your state of mind is tampering with your ability to work normally. Are you able to complete your routine tasks reasonably, in spite of your current outlook? Are you able to retain healthy relationships with co-workers, mates and family?

These kinds of questions are never easy to answer, particularly if you are in the emotional throws of a life changing event. If in doubt though, always err on the side of caution, and talk to a professional.