Depression Hurts: Symptoms and Effective Ways to Manage Depression

Like happiness, times of sadness are inevitable. When we lose a loved one, experience disappointment, or become discouraged, it is normal to feel sad. Midlife also offers a season of “blue” feelings, as children leave home to begin lives of their own, and age begins to affect our body.

But when sadness lingers for long periods of time and colors the world drab, when fatigue zaps energy and emotional enthusiasm wanes, and when feelings of melancholy rob the quality of life . . . that is depression.

Depression hurts; not only the sufferer, but family and close friends as well. In fact, depression can drastically affect a person’s life and health in very negative ways.

“Clinical Depression” is defined as depression that lasts for weeks, months, or even years at a time. Symptoms vary from person to person, and can be mild, moderate, or severe. But the biggest difference between an “ordinary” episode of sadness and Clinical Depression is that in Clinical Depression, symptoms are present most of the day, nearly every day, for a period of at least two weeks. Read more

Common Symptoms of Clinical Depression

Clinical Depression is a catch all phrase for any number of depressive disorders.

The symptoms of clinical depression affect everyone who suffers from it in different ways.

Depression affects people across all age ranges, genders, ethnicities, cultures and religions. According to the American Psychiatric Association over 17 million men and women in the U.S. suffer from some form of clinical depression every year.

Clinical depression is very different then the normal “blue” moods most people go through during their lives. Most people react to major let downs and traumatic experiences in their lives such as breakups of relationships or deaths of family or friends the same way.

They have a period of mourning or just feeling in the dumps but after a few days to a week they start to return to their normal selves. Clinical depression sufferers do not snap out of their depressed moods. They can spend weeks, months and even years trapped in their malaise.

It is the length of the feelings and symptoms that will confirm a diagnosis of clinical depression but many people who suffer from this illness do not seek the help they need. They may not even realize that they are indeed suffering from a form of depression because their current condition has slowly manifested itself over a long period of time. The common symptoms of clinical depression can be broken up into three categories. Any combination of these symptoms that last for more than a two week period of time signifies that someone is suffering with depression. Read more

Can Losing your Job Affect Your Mental Health?

According to CBS news today, losing your job can affect you mentally in a number of ways. Dr. Sudeepta Varma, Psychiatrist at New York University Medical Center  said that people could end up lonely and depressed and that the consequences of the anxiety and depression could be worse than actually losing the job itself

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