Depression Symptoms

Depression is a psychological disorder which affects how you live your life. It affects everything. It affects your health, it affects your social life and it affects how you live your everyday life.

Depression can cause your health to deteriorate and should be treated immediately after you notice something different about your friend or your family’s personality. This is because depression can lead to a more serious health and psychological problem.

It is naturally for people to feel sad or depressed from time to time. It may be caused by loss, frustration, or an injured self-esteem. However, sometimes these feelings may cause a person to affect their ability to think, eat, sleep, work, and getting along with other people.

If you see these examples of behavior from your friend or from a member of your family, sign or symptoms, it is likely that they are suffering from depression and should immediately be treated in order to avoid further deterioration in the person’s emotional, physical and mental health.

• If you see him or her being always sad
• If you see feelings of hopelessness
• Always feeling guilty about something they didn’t even do
• Lose of self worth
• Loss of interest in things they do that usually makes them happy
• Loss of appetite
• Irritable
• Always thinks about being alone
• Don’t go out with friends
• Thinks or talks about suicide or makes an attempt to commit suicide

As you can see, severe depression can be very dangerous and can be life threatening. If you don’t act immediately, they may commit suicide or suffer from a more severe mental and physical disorder.

Giving birth to a child is one of women’s peaks of achievement that no man will ever be able to experience. The feeling of giving birth to a child, albeit an extremely painful experience, is a joy like no other.

But sadly, there are women who instead of being jubilated has felt depressed after. Not that because they don’t want the child, but because of a hormonal imbalance that is called Postpartum depression.

Some women don’t even succumb to Postpartum depression during their first born. Postpartum depression may happen even with the second or third child. A mother who has just given birth may feel extreme feelings of depression, anxiety and irritability.

Sometimes this feelings can be quite intense and can be a hindrance to a woman’s ability to normally function. When that happens, that is a sure sign that she must seek medical attention.

Early detection is necessary for a faster and easier treatment, that is why if you notice any of the Postpartum depression symptom listed below, consult your doctor immediately.

· Intense depression and frequent crying
· Severely irritable and very restless
· Always tired and unable to sleep
· Extreme weight loss and no appetite
· Either has no concern or over concern to the new baby
· Feeling worthless, guilty and inadequate
· Great fear of doing harm to the baby or to herself
· No interest in socializing and precious habits

Being able to quickly diagnose Post partum depression is the key to a successful treatment. So it is best to consul a doctor immediately if any Postpartum depression symptom is noticed.

Do you find yourself often irritable or angry, trapped in confusion, misery, uncertainty, unconfident, and hopeless that you feel that your life has no direction or your life isn’t worth living?

These feelings are emotional symptoms of depression. It is not as simple as having a bad day that disappears quickly, but continues to stay and interfere in your daily life. Emotional symptoms co-exist with physical symptoms too.

Physical symptoms of depression are sometimes interpreted as symptoms of physical illness although they’re not, and it is necessary to be aware and know how to deal with it.

These changes in your body may include:

• Headaches, back pain and chest pain are common in people with depression.

• Digestive problems – sluggish movement of intestines that results to fullness of the stomach, dyspepsia and constipation may be experienced.

• Sleep disturbance – trouble going to sleep (insomia) or frequently waking up in the middle of the night, early-morning awakening and unable to sleep again or sometimes oversleeping.

• Exhaustion and fatigue- you easily get tired or cannot perform even the simplest task.

• Change in appetite or weight – loss of appetite resulting to weight loss or craves for sweet, rich foods and overeats therefore gains weight.

• Sexual dysfunction- women may have a problem such as irregular menstrual period and loss of interest in sex and erectile impotence for men.

If you experienced or have been experiencing these physical symptoms, discuss this with your doctor for proper treatment and teach you how to cope better.

Above all, help yourself. Think positively. Try to find out your special skills or talents and then develop them. Set up priorities and focus on your role in life. Depression affects not only you, but also those who love you.

Being depressed or feeling sad from time to time is a natural reaction of humans when they experience something traumatic, like the loss of a loved one, loss of job, domestic violence, divorce, stress, financial problems, social failures and others.

However, sometimes these feelings can get out of hand and the person suffering from manic depression can be a danger to others and to him or herself.

Manic depressive illness is also called bipolar mood disorder. The person suffering from one may switch moods from depression and mania frequently. You probably know about and refer to it as mood swings.

This illness can be classified as mild, moderate and severe. People with this kind of illness should be treated immediately by consulting a psychiatrist and family and friends should fully support the person suffering from the said illness.

In order to know if the person has a manic depressive illness or bipolar mood disorder, here are examples of signs and symptoms you should watch out for:

Feelings:

• Frequently feels sad
• Loss of interest in spending time with family or friends
• Pessimistic
• Loss of interest in sex
• Loss of interest in having fun or do activities that usually makes him or her happy
• Anxiety attacks
• Always worried about something

Thoughts:

• Loss of self-esteem
• Obsessed with a certain thought
• Hearing voices or hallucinating
• Having strange ideas or delusions
• Thoughts of suicide or homicide
• Slowed thinking

Physical:

• Loss of appetite
• Weight loss
• Loss of energy
• Cravings for sweets
• Frequent attacks of headaches and muscle aches
• Restlessness

Behaviors:

• Slowed speech and movement
• Loss of interest with social contact
• Excessive use of alcohol and drugs
• Cries easily

These are the symptoms of depression. In mania, however, it is very different. You may notice that they will suddenly be happy. They may have high self-esteem, increase in creativity, and decreased need for sleep.

However, there will be times that he or she will overreact with the slightest thing happening, having the urge of destroying properties, and will have a hostile attitude.

These feelings will cycle frequently. You will notice that on one day he or she will be depressed and on the other he or she will be extremely happy and goes back to depression after a day or two.

This illness can be life threatening for him or her and to other person.

Not treating this illness will result in increased severity over the years and manic depression simptoms ‘ll worst.

In about 1 year, roughly 20 million Americans or about 10 percent of the American population will be afflicted by depression. This results to a severe hamper to their ability to function well and will further result to high economic damages, but the emotional damages are catastrophically higher.

And because most of the depressed population doesn’t seek help or has failed to diagnose the disorder, some of them will progress on to clinical or major depression.

This hinders a person’s ability to work, study, eat, sleep and enjoy activities that are usually pleasurable to them before being stricken with major depression.

Therefore it is essential that major depression symptoms be detected and noticed so that professional help and treatment be administered to stop the depressive disorder and allow a person to function normally and enjoy life.

Major depression symptoms:

• Continuous Sad, depressed and anxious emotion felt
• Always negative, hopeless, guilt, feeling worthless and helpless
• Loss of interest in sex and other favorite recreational activities
• Over fatigue, slow and has no energy
• Finds difficulty in concentrating, making decisions and remembering events
• Insomnia or wakes up early
• Has low appetite with significant weight loss or overeating with significant weigh gain
• Irritable and restless
• Recurring physical symptoms like headaches, chronic pain and digestive problems

Some of the symptoms listed above may not happen with some people with major depression. But having 2 or more is already enough for a person to be diagnosed with major depression.

Everyone has been down to the dumps. It’s okay to feel sad from time to time. It’s just a natural human emotion. While we’d rather be happy all the time, this is an unavoidable emotion as we do experience being let down, disappointments and loss. But we do get up and become stronger persons. We take challenges and turn them into opportunities.

If a person who doesn’t get out of his slump for about two weeks, then there is a problem. Beyond that, he or she may have clinical depression.

Among all mental illnesses, clinical depression is one of the most common and easiest to treat. This disorder also happens to anyone, irregardless of culture, sex and class.

Sadly, many people fail to get treatment, although treatments have an 85 to 90% success rate, because they fail to be diagnosed in time, partly because they don’t know the clinical depression symptoms.

For proper diagnosis of clinical depression you must know the clinical depression symptoms. If you notice someone you know that has at least 2 or 4 of these clinical depression symptoms they need to seek professional help immediately:

· Melancholia, constantly sad and depressed and moving very slow.
· Overly fatigue and loss of energy.
· No interest and pleasure found in previously enjoyed activities.
· Easily noticeably changes in sleeping habits and insomnia.
· Feeling guilty and worthless.
· Thinking of suicide, death and/or has attempted suicide.

For people with clinical depression, these symptoms are lingering and never ceases.

With about thirty to forty percent of all people diagnosed with depression, atypical depression is the most common subtype of depression in outpatients that inflicts the depressed population.

Unlike the more sever cases of depression, atypical depression allows an inflicted person to have mood reactivity. They can sometimes react to a positive event or situation.

Atypical depression also has a high chance in treatment. They can be easily treated especially if an atypical depression symptom is detected early and treatment is done immediately.

That is why it is imperative that an atypical depression symptom should be learned and known to be easily identified. If you notice at least two or four of the following Atypical depression symptoms coupled with depression, then it is best to have the person be checked-up by a specialist in mental disorders;

Atypical depression symptoms:

· Mood reactivity – A depressed person’s mood actually brightens up when a positive situation happens or is expected to happen.
· Hypersomnia – oversleeps, unlike in the melancholic subtype of depression where the person doesn’t sleep at all.
· Over-eating – there is significant weight increase.
· Leaden paralysis – feeling heavy, leaden in legs and arm.

It should be noted that an atypical depression symptom could be detected at a young age because it usually happens earlier, teenage period, than most forms of depression.

Also, atypical depression mostly happens to women, as they represent roughly sixty five to seventy percent of patients with this subtype of depression.

What is depression postpartum?

Depression postpartum is known as perinatal depression. Depression can affect women during or after pregnancy – even a year later -. The exact number of women with depression during this time is unknown. But researchers believe that depression is one of the most common complications during and after pregnancy. Often, the depression is not recognized or treated, because some normal pregnancy changes cause similar symptoms and are happening at the same time. Tiredness, problems sleeping, stronger emotional reactions, and changes in body weight may occur during pregnancy and after pregnancy. But these symptoms may also be signs of depression.

What causes depression postpartum?

Generally, depression is a disease only dependent of each patient. Depression Postpartum is characterized for hormone changes or a stressful life event, for example: death in the family, can cause changes in the woman brain. Often depression is a disease present in a lot of families.

During Pregnancy, some factors may help woman’s chances of develop depression, such as:

Family history of mental illness.

Anxiety about the fetus.

Young mother’s age.

Marital or financial problems.

There are external factors that might help women to develop a depression:

Feeling tired, because not enough rest during night.

Feeling overwhelmed with a new member in the family, or another baby.

Feeling stress in work and with home routines, no matter what.

Sometimes women feel fat, for this reason they can loss control of theirselves.

After Pregnancy:

Usually women have important change in their hormones. While pregnancy, woman’s hormone increase greatly, for example estrogen and progesterone. On the other hand, after childbirth, exactly 24 hours later, all hormones rapidly drops back down to normal levels. Last researches; discovered that changes in hormone levels may lead to depression, just as smaller changes in hormones can affect a woman’s moods before she gets her menstrual period.

What is Mifepristone?:

Mifepristone is too known as RU-486, this drug is ussualy used for abortion; on the other hand, Mifepristone is use too as anticancer drug. Last researches have discovered that Mifepristone is used by people with pshychotic depression as well- there are people that suffer a deep mental disorder, often the main symptoms are; pain, paranoia and hallucations, thus psychotic depression involves body, mood, and thoughts – because, antidepressant medications usually are ineffective for those patients, and combining antidepressants with antipsychotic drugs improve symptoms but for only about 60 percent of them.

How Mifepristone works?:

High levels of the steroidal hormone cortisol cause the extreme symptoms of psychotic depression. The excess hormone results from an overactive group of glands called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, thus psychiatrists believe electroconvulsive therapy works by resetting this axis, returning it to a normal state. Mifepristone blocks one of the cortisol receptors and also may reset the axis, since improvements persisted for patients.

The bottom line, according to last researches, mifepristone appeared to lower levels of cortisol – a stress hormone that has been linked to psychotic depression – . Psychiatrists had checked in their patients – in weeks with mifepristone treatment – , it helps them to overcome the danger – of psychotic depression – therefore, they can return to normal medication, and it might save many people lifes, because people with psychotic depression have higher level risks for suicide than people with other depressive diseases.

Do not forget that usually psychiatrists recommend tmifepristone must not to be used as a treatment for chronic manic depression, because mifepristone might bring them side effects; in these cases it is advisable on the role of cortisol in depressive behaviour.