Facts about Depression
Depression is something we hear every day and everyone has used that term to refer to themselves at one or more point in their life. While some are in fact showing some signs of depression, the term has been used so commonly to indicate sadness, and now depression is taken lightly, especially in this part of the world.
Additionally, so many TV shows, musicians, and even society as a whole has romanticized mental disorders, most especially depression. They have painted mental conditions to be what they are not, and so a good amount of people see mentally ill people as “defective” or “a poor soul”. Another good amount of people have seen depression as something cool to have, and so these people fake being “broken”. That’s the world we live in. Some even fake being depressed in order to misuse the medication prescribed to them!
Nowadays, it is a well-known fact that over half of the population suffering from mental health conditions are people with this disorder. In more detail, it affects more than 300 million people worldwide. You may ask questions like “so what exactly is this dangerous disease”? Well, it is a very broad topic, so we would be discussing it over several blog posts.
This week, we would talk about what exactly depression is, and why it is so insidious to our health.
What The Hell Is Depression?
Like I mentioned in my previous article, there are several types of mental conditions. There are anxiety disorders, mood disorders, eating disorders, etc. Depression is a mood disorder characterized by feelings of dejection and helplessness. It leads to a patient feeling that they are not good enough or feeling unnecessarily guilty for no reason.
Before an individual can be diagnosed with depression, there are several symptoms that has to be displayed by the patient. For starters, a patient has to have a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest. These are the fundamental symptoms that are required to be able to diagnose for depression. We would talk about the symptoms of depression in a later post, but you are encouraged to look it up to better understand if you want to know more.
Women are more diagnosed than men with depression, so that pregnant women that you see as cranky so much is most likely suffering from pre-natal depression. That kid that lost his dad ten years ago and still feels helpless is not being over dramatic, they are likely suffering from a certain type of depression.
Depression is also one of the leading causes of suicide worldwide. Let’s take a story to help you understand that it is more dangerous than how people take it to be. Emeka had a happy life, and was loved by his three children and wife. He had a successful career, and was seen as a “complete man” by the community he was in. Suddenly, he lost his job due to unforeseen circumstances.
His family went through very hard times after that, and after that, his wife could not take it any longer and divorced him. She took the kids away, and now Emeka says he’s feeling depressed. His friends and family tell him “You are a man, suck it up”. One day, Emeka can’t take the loneliness and misfortune anymore and kills himself. Although the unfortunate events played some part in his death, the lack of seriousness that people took his words was ultimately the pitchfork pointed at his heart.
What I Think
Depression is not only a disease that is gotten by a person lacking something. That misconception is bewildering and wrong on so many reasons. It goes past that, as anyone can be diagnosed with clinical depression. Depression is not something to be taken with levity, nor is it something to downplay. If it is paid attention to more, and more resources are allocated to treating mental health disorders as a whole, then maybe, just maybe people would see it for what it truly is and know how to manage it.