Detecting Symptoms of Depression in Yourself or a Loved One!

Depression
Depression (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It is important to realize that the signs & symptoms of depression can be treated and that there is always hope and help available for treatment of depression. Effective depression treatment, whether with homeopathic medication, psychotherapy or other methods can obtain the goal of returning a person to their normal self. Nearly half of all people who experience depression symptoms do not seek help or get properly diagnosed. Reaching out for help is often the most difficult step, but it is also the most important step.

We often use the expression “I’m feeling depressed” when we’re feeling sad or miserable about life. Usually, these feelings pass in due course. But if the feelings are interfering with your life and don’t go away after a couple of weeks, or if they come back, over and over again, for a few days at a time, it could be a sign that you’re depressed in the medical sense of the term.

Detecting Symptoms of Depression in Yourself or a Loved One

Unfortunately, about two-thirds of people with depression go undiagnosed. Untreated depression is the number one cause of suicide, which is a sad testament to the clinical astuteness of most physicians. Depression, a common type of depressive disorder, is responsible for about 66 percent of all suicides. The disease occurs twice as often in women as in men and the risk increases if depression is present in an immediate family member. As the leading cause of premature death and disability in people between the ages of 18 and 44 years, it is surprising that there are no universally accepted diagnostic criteria for depression.

There are also various specific forms of depression:

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD)

If you usually become depressed only during the autumn and winter, it could be due to not getting enough daylight. You may benefit from spending time sitting in front of a special light box.

Postnatal depression

Many mothers have ‘the baby blues’ soon after the birth of their baby, but it usually passes after a few days. Postnatal depression is a more serious problem and can appear any time between two weeks and two years after the birth.

Bipolar disorder (manic depression)

Some people have mood swings, when periods of depression alternate with periods of mania. When manic, they are in a state of high excitement, and may plan and may try to execute grandiose schemes and ideas.

At least one person in every six becomes depressed in the course of their lives. One in 20 is clinically depressed. Figures suggest that it is women more than men who become depressed, but men may find it harder to admit to or talk about their experience. All age groups can be affected, and it’s important to take symptoms seriously and not to dismiss them as an inevitable part of growing up or growing old

What are the symptoms of depression?

Depression shows itself in many different ways. People don’t always realise what’s going on because their problems seem to be physical, not mental. They tell themselves they’re simply under the weather or feeling tired. But if you tick off five or more of the following symptoms, it’s likely you’re depressed:

  • being restless and agitated
  • waking up early, having difficulty sleeping, or sleeping more
  • feeling tired and lacking energy; doing less and less
  • using more tobacco, alcohol or other drugs than usual
  • not eating properly and losing or putting on weight
  • crying a lot
  • difficulty remembering things
  • physical aches and pains with no physical cause
  • feeling low-spirited for much of the time, every day
  • being unusually irritable or impatient
  • getting no pleasure out of life or what you usually enjoy
  • losing interest in your sex life
  • finding it hard to concentrate or make decisions
  • blaming yourself and feeling unnecessarily guilty about things
  • lacking self-confidence and self-esteem
  • being preoccupied with negative thoughts
  • feeling numb, empty and despairing
  • feeling helpless
  • distancing yourself from others; not asking for support
  • taking a bleak, pessimistic view of the future
  • experiencing a sense of unreality
  • self-harming (by cutting yourself, for example)
  • thinking about suicide.

What can I do to help myself if I am manifesting symptoms of depression ?

Depression has one major characteristic that you need to be aware of when thinking about what you can do to defeat it. It can feed on itself. In other words, you get depressed and then you get more depressed about being depressed. Negative thoughts become automatic and are difficult for you to challenge. Being in a state of depression can then, itself, become a bigger problem than the difficulties that caused it in the first place. You need to break the hold that the depression has on you.

Treatments for Depression

At a time when you may well find making decisions difficult, it can also seem like an added burden to try and choose between a range of treatment options.

Exercise – If you have depression, or even if you just feel down from time to time, exercise is a MUST. Many studies have confirmed that physical exercise is at least as good as antidepressants for helping people who are depressed. One of the primary ways it does this is by increasing the level of endorphins, the “feel good” hormones, in your brain.

Address your stress — Depression is a very serious condition, however it is not a “disease.” Rather, it’s a sign that your body and your life are out of balance.

This is so important to remember, because as soon as you start to view depression as an “illness,” you think you need to take a drug to fix it. In reality, all you need to do is return balance to your life, and one of the key ways to doing this is addressing stress.

Let the Sun Shine Down on You -Have you ever noticed how great it can feel to spend time outdoors on a sunny day? Well, it turns out that getting safe sun exposure, which allows your body to produce vitamin D, is great for your mood.

One study even found that people with the lowest levels of vitamin D were 11 times more prone to depression than those who received adequate vitamin D.

Why Antidepressant Drugs Don’t Work in the treatment of depression?

Researchers from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine shared two major findings:

Antidepressant drugs were not invented for depression. Researchers used certain drugs to manipulate the behavior of stressed animals, and then concluded (erroneously) that the drugs would be “good antidepressants.” But chronic stress does not cause the same molecular changes that depression does, making the hypothesis incorrect.

So, antidepressants were actually designed to treat stress, rather than depression—which is one reason they are so ineffective.

An imbalance of neurotransmitters in your brain may not trigger depressive symptoms in the way that has long been believed. Instead, the biochemical events that lead to depression appear to start in the development and functioning of neurons. This means antidepressants focus on the effect of depression and completely miss the cause… yet another reason why they are so ineffective for most people.

Research suggests the use of antidepressant drugs may actually result in more relapses back into depression in the long run. In other words, these drugs may be turning depression into a more chronic condition.

The other worrisome effect is that antidepressant drugs appear to be converting people from unipolar depression into bipolar—meaning, fluctuating between mania and depression—and this disorder has much poorer long-term outcomes.

The List of Terrifying Antidepressant Drug Side Effects Grows

Depression—or described another way, “unrepaired emotional short-circuiting”— can cause far more profound negative health consequences than all the damaged food and toxins you expose yourself to daily.

Psychiatric drugs kill 42,000 people every year—that’s 12,000 MORE people than successfully commit suicide due to depression! And the death count continues to rise.

Antidepressants are the largest category of psychiatric drugs. It wouldn’t be so bad if antidepressants were harmless sugar pills, occasionally showing benefit simply because you believe they will work.

But in addition to being ineffective, they are far from harmless and are now associated with many serious health problems:

Diabetes: Your risk for type 2 diabetes is two to three times higher if you take antidepressants, according to one study.

Problems with your immune system: SSRIs cause serotonin to remain in your nerve junctions longer, interfering with immune cell signaling and T cell growth.

Suicidal thoughts and feelings and violent behavior : Your risk for suicide may be twice as high if you take SSRIs; seven out of twelve school shootings were by children who were either on antidepressants or withdrawing from them.

Stillbirths: A Canadian study of almost 5,000 mothers found that women on SSRIs were twice as likely to have a stillbirth, and almost twice as likely to have a premature or low birth weight baby; another study showed a 40 percent increased risk for birth defects, such as cleft palate.

Brittle bones: One study showed women on antidepressants have a 30 percent higher risk of spinal fracture and a 20 percent high risk for all other fractures.

Stroke: Your risk for stroke may be 45 percent higher if you are on antidepressants, possibly related to how the drugs affect blood clotting

Death: Overall death rates have been found to be 32 percent higher in women on antidepressants.

Diabetes or stroke will kill you, but suicide is much quicker. The link between suicide and antidepressants is so strong that these drugs have been mandated to have suicide warnings.

Welling Homeopathy Treatment for Depression:

Homeopathic medicines are not prescribed based on the person’s diagnosed disease but on the unique way the person experiences his or her disease. In other words, homeopathic medicines are prescribed based on the SYNDROME of various physical and psychological symptoms, not just a single symptom or disease label. Although the selection of the correct homeopathic prescribing is more complex than the use of conventional drugs or even many herbal preparations, the system of prescribing that is individualized to the whole person is intellectually sound… and its results are often significant if not substantial.

Homeopathy can positively influence personality traits that are working at the base of disease. The important aspect is that depression is a disease in which genetic make-up is topped with environmental stress result in disease. Homeopathy medicines address the root cause of the disease and hence prevent the relapse and recurrence of the condition. Lastly homeopathy medicines are absolutely free from any side-effects as opposed to most of conventional medicines like anti-depressants and anxiolytics.

Welling Homeopathy has helped people with the majority of their symptoms of depression in the past few years. The unique CUREplus Treatment Protocol for Psychological Illnesses has helped Welling Homeopathy become the foremost option for the treatment of depression in Mumbai.

2 thoughts on “Detecting Symptoms of Depression in Yourself or a Loved One!”

  1. Sourabh Welling,M.D.

    Thanks for visiting the site, S.D.Patkar. Homeopathy Treatment can be very effective in the treatment of Parkinsons’ Disease. You can visit any good Homeopath close to your house or visit us to know more about the treatment parameters.

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