Are you depressed?

Talk to your doctor. Talk to a mental health professional.
Talk to someone.

We all feel sad from time to time. However ‘depressive illness’, or ‘major depression’, is when those unhappy feelings and symptoms don’t go away. The main symptoms of depression are well known and are listed below.

Symptom Checklist*

• Depressed mood
  Have you felt sad or wanted to cry? Do you feel down or low? Have you felt hopeless?
• Loss of interest
  Are you less interested in work, pleasures, or hobbies? Are you spending less time with activities that used to be enjoyable?
• Weight loss (or gain)
  Have you lost weight? Is it an effort to eat food? Or are you eating more for comfort?
• Insomnia
  Are you having difficulty getting off to sleep, or remaining asleep? Do you wake up too early and can’t get back to sleep?
• Agitation (& retardation)
  Do you feel on edge or fidgety? Do you feel slow in your thoughts or speech?
• Fatigue
  Have you lost energy? Does everything seem all too hard?
• Guilt / Low self esteem
  Do you feel worthless? Do you blame yourself for things or feel you’ve let people down?
• Poor concentration
  Is it difficult to follow or understand things? Is it difficult to focus when you read?
• Thoughts about death & suicide
  Have you been thinking more about death? Does life seem less worthwhile?

Technically, a diagnosis of major depression requires five or more of these symptoms lasting more than two weeks. Less technically, if you can relate to some of the questions above it might be helpful to investigate depression as the cause.

* DSM IV (American Psychiatric Association). *HRS-D.

The good news is depression is very common and very well treated. Talk to your doctor. Talk to a psychologist or counsellor. Talk to someone.

Visit
http://www.beyondblue.org.au/
http://www.depressionet.com.au/

A final point on depression
For the technically minded, depression is caused by a complex interaction of neurotransmitters (particularly serotonin), psychological and learning factors, and social/environmental factors.

Another final point
As with any problem with your health, you are responsible for getting appropriate treatment for your depression. Unfortunately, in some cases, you may have people telling you to simply ‘pull your socks up etc.’ This is an unfortunate example of someone talking out of their depth. A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing. If you are being bothered by such unhelpful persons encourage them to discuss depression with their own doctor. Alternatively, direct them to ‘Life Psychology’ so we can explain how stupid they are.