Coping with depression

"I'm a burden to everyone"

"I feel like I'm in a dark room with no escape."

"heavy and tired, feels like I'm moving through quicksand."

These are some common thoughts that come to us during depression. More than 17 million Americans develop depression each year. In fact, World Health Organization (WHO) states "depression is the most common illness worldwide and the leading cause of disability." Globally, they estimate that 350 million people are affected by depression.

But, what exactly is depression? How can we cope up with it? This article will give you an analysis on what depression is and focusing on how to cope up with it.

Wikipedia defines depression as "Depression is a mental health disorder characterized by persistently low mood and a feeling of sadness and loss of interest." The average length of a depressive episode is 6-8 months. Depression affects how you feel about yourself and makes life more difficult to manage from day to day. "Depression drains your energy, hope, and drive, making it difficult to take the steps that will help you to feel better." says Melinda Smith, a PhD in Psychology.

You may have depression if you have more than five of these symptoms:

- Fatigue/loss of energy

- Persistent feeling sad, anxious, irritable or 'empty mood.'

- Reduced appetite or increased appetite.

- Loss of pleasure in doing things they loved to do, including sex.

- Constant suicidal thoughts

- Concentration difficulties

- Sense of guilt, hopelessness or worthlessness

- Withdrawal from other people

- Having difficulty 'getting started' with activites

Again, there may be other reasons for you to feel this way. So it's highly recommended that if you think you have depression, you should see a doctor.

With all the myths floats around the internet about depression, it is wrongly interpreted. Here's a list of things that depression isn't :

- Feeling sad about a bad situation

- Grieving the loss of a loved one.

- A choice

- Sign of weakness

- Character flaw

- Something that everybody experiences

There are different kinds of depression. But identifying the type of depression you have isn't an easy job. Since most of the symptoms are alike, it's hard to identify them without professional help. Depression is mainly classified as:

- Melancholia

- Psychotic depression

- Antenatal and postnatal depression

- Major depression

- Bipolar disorder

- Cyclothymic disorder

- Dysthymic disorder

- Seasonal affective disorder (SAD)

How to cope up with depression?

Overcoming depression isn't an easy job to do. It requires lot of persistence and patience. You can't just snap out of it. It takes time, but in the end, it's all worth it. Even if you are strongly affected by depression, you have to start small and build from there. Coping up with depression requires persistence. But, it's hard to persist under depression. "Sometimes, just thinking about the things you should do to feel better, like exercising or spending time with friends, can seem exhausting or impossible to put into action."

Here are few ways you can learn to cope up with depression:

I. Professional help:

When professional help is available to you, you should try to make use of it as it is one of the most best way to help yourself through this.

1. Medication:

Doctors usually recommend medication to patients who are diagnosed with depression. Brain chemistry may contribute to an individuals depression and may factor into their treatment. For this reason, antidepressants might be prescribed to help modify ones brain chemistry. Generally antidepressant medications have no stimulating effect on people not experiencing depression.

Antidepressants produce noticeable improvement within the few weeks of usage. Full benefits may not be seen for two to three months. If a patient feels little or no improvement after several weeks, their psychiatrist may change the dose of the medication or move to another antidepressant. Depending on the intensity of the depression, treatment can take a few weeks to few months. It totally depends on the patient.

2. Psychotherapy:

Psychotherapy, or talk therapy, is sometimes used to treat mild depression. For moderate to severe depression, psychotherapy is often used along with antidepressant medications. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has been found to be effective in treating depression. CBT is a form of therapy focused on the present and problem solving. CBT helps a person to recognize distorted thinking and then change behaviors and thinking.

Depending on how severe the depression is , treatment can take a few weeks or much longer. In many cases, significant improvement can be made in 10 to 15 sessions.

II. Helping yourself out:

This method should be used when professional help isn't available. There is no disadvantage through this process, but it requires a lot of persistence. Going through depression alone is a very hard thing. It's always recommended that you speak to a friend about your depression and ask them for their support. Remember there's nothing wrong in asking for help.

Here's a step-by-step process that can help you get through depression:

1. Follow a schedule:

If youre depressed, you need a routine. Depression might have already effected most of your regular life and is striping away parts of you. First thing you have to do is, don't let in. Don't let depression take out bits of you life everyday. You have to restructure your life.

You don't have to set 'ambitious' goals for yourself. You just have to set gentle daily schedule that can help you get back on track.

2. Sleep regularly

Sleep is essential to a healthy, balanced body. Lack of sleep can develop negative thinking and easily becomes a vicious cycle whereby your negative thoughts keep you awake. Depression alters our sleep schedule to a certain extent. Some people sleep more than required while some sleep less. Breaking this cycle requires a strict sleep schedule of a bedtime and waking time every day.

3. Exercise

"A recent study showed exercise to be as effective as Zoloft in treating depression." Reports a research conducted at Harvard. Exercise releases a natural anti-depressant chemical in your brain and gets you into doing something active. Usually, downloading a fitness app in your phone will motivate you to walk more. Set daily reminders and break them. You can always start small like going to a grocery by walk instead of your car or something similar.

Your can join a sports team, go run, or play with your dog in the garden. As long as it's going out and stretching yourself physically, it's great!

4. Maintain a healthy diet

Reduce your intake of sugar and processed food. Drink 8-10 glasses of water daily and eat food you like. (pizza) Improving your diet can be a positive project to keep you constructively occupied and focused when you're working through your depression. Eat as many bananas as possible. "Bananas are a great source of the neurotransmitter serotonin, the levels of which are said to be low in the brains of depressed people."says Ross Bonander, writer at PsyWeb. Eating bananas would then make sense because people can feed their brain the required chemicals to beat their depression.

5. Reach out to new people!

Talk with friends, family and colleagues who make you feel good and who are good to be around. Fill your life with positive people, try meeting new people everyday. This will allow you to make new connections in your life and you'll feel good about it later.

6. Meditate!

Meditation has shown to be helpful to reduce the symptoms of depression upto a certain extent. Wikipedia defines meditation as "A practice where an individual operates or trains the mind or induces a mode of consciousness, either to realize some benefit or for the mind to simply acknowledge its content without becoming identified with that content, or as an end in itself."

Here are some links that could help you get started with meditation :

18 minutes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jyy0ra2WcQQ

10 minutes (Perfect for starters)- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p_yaNFSYao

https://zenhabits.net/meditation-guide/

With these methods you can help yourself to cope up with depression. It isn't easy, but it's not impossible! With efforts, you can put depression in the past and be the best of yourself! As someone once said, "Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible."

GD

Resources:

https://goo.gl/WxBDLr

https://goo.gl/CBAAaV

https://goo.gl/EwZk1p

https://goo.gl/2DLh28

https://goo.gl/dU4mmb

Questions to discuss:

Did you go through depression or going through one right now? What do you think about it? Share your thoughts.

Even though depression is a common disorder, many countries fail to accept it as a standard illness. How can you spread awareness about depression in your society?