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What is depression, types and of depression

Have you ever felt like you were suffocating? You’re in this big empty room with no windows no colour and no people around and you’re just standing there in the middle of this big room and you feel suffocated? like some unknown hands are strangling your neck and you can’t do anything about it because you don’t know whose hands are those and you can’t even see those hands and there’s literally no one around to fight for or fight to…

You just stand there all alone wondering if it’s really worth it to try to remove those invisible hands from your neck…asking yourself if those hands are really chocking you or trying to prove it’s worthless to fight because nothing matters…life is going to be hard anyway so what’s the point… 

why try to fight the strangling hands when what it clearly does is help you let go without any pain or power? If that’s what you’re going through, then this is for you. The world may have made you think that you are useless and all you do is be depressed, but I’m here to tell you that you are something more than just people’s false opinions. It’s normal to feel down once in a while, but if you’re sad most of the time and it affects your daily life, you may have clinical depression.

What is depression?

Depression is a mental health disorder that causes a persistent state of being depressed or feeling sad along with losing interest in regular activities and social life. It’s the feeling that you have when you feel like your life is on pause while your surrounding is in motion. It’s that deep heaviness in your heart that cannot be made lighter no matter how much you try to motivate yourself. There are several causes for the onset of depression including genetic, social and psychological factors which causes an alteration in the brain functions and neural activities which in turn causes a setback in regular physical functions.

Types of depression

There are many types of depression from chronic to manic episodes:

Major Depression 

types of depression

MDD or major depressive disorder is a case in which one may feel depressed on most days of the week. The cause for such sort of depression may relate to past traumatic incidents replaying in your head again and again or a recent incident that triggered your hurtful memories. Sometimes long-term depression may occur even without a reason. This sudden onset of sadness may confuse us as to why it’s happening or how to stop feeling this way. You become really insecure and it may lead to the following depression symptoms:

  • Weight loss or weight gain
  • Irregular sleeping patterns
  • Feeling tired all the time
  • Heavy mood swings
  • Trouble concentrating on a task
  • Suicidal thoughts

Persistent Depressive Disorder 

In this case, one will have clinical depression that will last up to 2 or more years. It is a combination of dysthymia (low-grade persistent depression) and major depressive disorder. The signs of depression are equally the same as the symptoms of major depression also including, fatigue, loss of hope, and tiredness all over the body all the time feeling defeated and lack of interest in social contact. But in persistent depressive disorder, since the span of being depressed is long, every day is a struggle, every day the victim fights an internal war inside their head against suicidal thoughts. Most even attempt suicide and fail since they are not sure that it’s what they want. This is the most horrible mental disorder of all. 

Bipolar Disorder

This is a kind of disorder where one experiences maniac depression in the form of episodes that may last hours or days depending on brain activity. They undergo severe mood swings where for some time their mood is high ‘up’ and all of a sudden their mood becomes ‘low’. During the low phase, one will experience the symptoms of major depression. This type of depression may affect everyday activities and work experience. Even small things may set them off and their mood immediately changes. It is very difficult for them to make connections with other people because most people find these mood swings annoying and don’t understand that it is a disorder and beneath those irregular mood swings is a kind person that one should get to know.

Psychotic Depression 

what is depression- delusion

This can also be called mental torture. Because this type of depression include major depression along with psychotic activities like hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that aren’t real), delusions ( falsely believing something) and paranoia ( wrongly believing that other people are trying to cause harm). One does not have any idea what’s happening in the reality and tends to live in their made-up world of illusions. This may be caused due to the loss of a loved one or a major traumatic accident to the head. Treatment of depression must begin immediately when the signs of depression are noticed because this will lead to lack of sleep, detachment from people and severe mood swings which will affect the brain activity causing a person to go completely insane. This can also cause memory loss which can be temporary or permanent.

Frequently asked questions

causes of depression

What is depression?
Why does one fall into depression?
What happens to the mind while a person is feeling sad?
How can depression make on-self lose hope in life itself?
Is there even a treatment for depression?

We keep asking these questions without any answers. Maybe it’s because we are scared to know the answer to these questions. Sadness is part of everybody’s life. 

Humans tend to have strong feelings towards other human beings like love, hate, liking, etc. that influence their everyday life. Corruption in that regular feelings pattern leads to malfunction of the subconscious: doubting your feelings, doubting the people around you, questioning your opinions, breaking those meaningless relationships which lead to depression. 

You contemplate whether you made a mistake by letting go of relationships in your life, and your self-doubt increases which convince you that you are at fault for breaking relationships. You slowly start believing those words running in your head, and you shut down all the people who try to help you because you feel like you’re not worth helping and you feel like there’s no hope for you in this life or in this world.

Once you reach this phase, you start questioning your purpose in life, why you were born, what you have to do to fulfil your worth, and ultimately you don’t find answers to those questions; so you blame yourself for being incompetent and the world that made you incompetent. 

alone in the crowd- depression

All the people are the same, nobody cares, nobody loves, there is no more goodness left in this world, so it is better to leave this world right? These will be running in your head 24/7. Despite what you do to try and distract yourself from these thoughts, you just can’t shake the feeling that they are right and the world is just a cruel reality and that maybe if you can escape it, you will find happiness. 

And the worst part is when people don’t understand what you’re going through and they try to contemplate your well-being.

They have no idea what you’re battling and they start to compare your problems with theirs and somehow make yours seem like nothing, which will make you even worse than you are already feeling. Toxic relationships are the root cause of every single cause of depression.

Did you know that 1 in 8 people suffer from depression throughout the world?
And it is even said that today’s teenagers are more and more affected by depression. 

In India alone, around 200 million people suffer from depression according to the statistics report by the world health organization from 2019. India is very good at adopting western culture, but did it have to adopt depression too? And the 2020 lockdown didn’t make it any easier, mental health organizations stated that the increasing number of deaths and staying locked inside the houses increased people’s anxiety disorders and depression rates went shooting high during the COVID pandemic lockdown. In Japan, the rate of people’s death by suicide was more than that of the COVID in 2020. It indeed comes out as a shocker considering that Japan is one of the fast-growth countries. Japan has even appointed a ‘loneliness minister’ to monitor the rising suicide rates in japan which has happened for the first time in 11 years of the Japanese government. 

The Japan isolation minister Sakamoto-san stated that

(Japan PM) Suga instructed me to examine the issue and put forward a comprehensive strategy, by coordinating with the related ministry… I hope to carry out activities to prevent social loneliness and isolation and to protect ties between people

What indeed is happening to the world? Don’t take this lightly people, this is a serious issue that has to be addressed. If this situation continues, then the world’s population might disappear even before global warming reaches it’s maximum and destroys the planet from its very existence.

Now let’s come to the most important discussion, why do people frown upon hearing depression? Do they see it as some kind of sick joke? Do they see it as people wanting to get attention? This is not something that people should frown upon. The causes of depression may vary from person to person. It is also a genetically identified disorder. 

help people in depression

It’s not just a behaviour that one portrays, it is their routine. And people should start identifying the ones who are depressed among their family and friends circle to prevent further loss of life.

Every human life is valuable, one person might be someone’s daughter or son, mother or father, friend or relative, every single relationship is important, but depression kills all the love one has for relationships and the more people don’t notice and brush it off saying “I’m just giving them some space” or “it’s just a bad day for that person” the more love this world is going to lose. People having depression symptoms are still people, not some foreign alien, they feel every emotion a little more intensely than others, that doesn’t make them pitiful, and it makes them the strongest. 

Wait…

It is not the end. Read our upcoming article to get enlightened by spirituality and learn what Vedas and Bhagwad Gita says about depression. Don’t worry, we all are in this together.

Stay tuned

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