It is a mental state that is characterised by excessive sadness. Depressive state can be easily assessed and determined by following symptoms:
- Excessive sadness and low spirits
- Sleep disturbances, such as rising early in the morning, unrefreshing sleep or else excessive sleep
- Abdominal pain or chest pain
- Headache—very severe at times
- Headache/Migraine
- Loss of weight or gain (weight change)
- Reduced sex power and performance
- Psychomotor retardation
- Fatigue—even on slightest mental or physical activity/loss of energy
- Loss of appetite
Causes of Depression
There are 10 main causes which trigger depression:
- Lack of relationship with any body to confide in.
- Loss of a nearest blood relation, particularly of mother at childhood (say before eleven years of age).
- Having more than 3 children who cannot be looked after.
- Loss/Lack of employment—whether full or part-time.
- Sense of neglect and humiliation.
- Nagging by officers or wife.
- Poor and inadequate source of income not sufficient even to meet bare minimum requirements of family.
- Protracted and/or invalidating physical illness.
- Alcoholism, drug addiction or even abrupt withdrawal of either or both.
- Physiological or anatomical changes in the brain (organic causes).
Vulnerable Persons
- Young and growing children
- City-dwellers and socially weaker and deprived classes
- Women in child-bearing days
- Women outnumber men in depressional vulnerability
Old and dependent persons, particularly those who have no financial resources
Depressed mood is a common factor of depression. Mood changes trigger depressed states, but intensity and severity depends on the personality of the patient. Mood changes are also caused and affected by prolonged drug therapy and/or continuity of serious disorders like cancer. Parkinson’s disease, addison’s disease, cushing’s syndrome, hypothyroidism.
Depression is precipitated by negative approach to life, one’s own self, the world around, and about future. Actually, mood changes exhibit the affected person’s personality. Persons with strong will do not buckle under depression so easily but those, with weak personality, are more amenable and easily vulnerable to depression. One’s attitude towards life and events determines the quantum of vulnerability. It depends on as to how and in what way and how soon or late, one reacts or changes his mood in a given situation. This is how personality traits are determined, grit and determination or else weak resistance can be discerned.
Following symptoms of depression should suffice to prompt immediate medical attention :
- When there is marked diminished interest in activities of daily life.
- When weight falls or gains to the tune of at least 5% in one month.
- If there is lack, loss or excess of sleep or when there is unrefreshing sleep.
- If mood remains depressed for most part of the day.
- When feeling excessive guilt or worthlessness set in.
- When there is visible element of indecisiveness or when ability to think or concentrate gets diminished.
- If mood changes suddenly for the worse and there is mental depression/agitation.
- When the patient has a specific plan to commit suicide or an attempt to suicide or when there are (recurrent) thoughts of suicide or death.
- When there is negative pattern of thinking. q When there are phobic symptoms or prominent anxiety.
Management
A depressed person is not likely to respond to sympathy or else he may think that his ailment is being underplayed or that he is neither being attended to nor looked after. The malady is liable to get compounded when a sense of utter neglect creeps in but all such impressions should better be dispelled without delay. At least nothing should he done to offend the patient or he should be compelled to adopt a particular approach to life.
As soon as any of the symptoms is noticed, the patient should be removed from the hospital, despite his resistance and will. No drug therapy is being deliberately mentioned as it is fraught with hazardous consequences, if taken without a specialist doctor’s opinion. In their eagerness and anxiety to gain quicker relief, the patient may, either of his own or by his family member, get excessive dose which is both detrimental and counter-productive.
