How do I know if I'm sad or depressed?

Sadness is a temporary emotion and is experienced by practically everyone at at least one time in their life. Depression is sadness that is constant (typically 6 months or more), severe and unrelenting and can sometimes have no noticeable cause. There may also be weight/appetite changes, over/under sleeping, thoughts of hurting oneself, lack of interest in hobbies and inability to concentrate. If your feelings match the second definition, consider asking for support and/or professional help.

Being sad is a feeling, which is "fleeting", can be remedied easier, and it's usually easy to see the reason why you are sad. For example, you can be sad because you have been planning to go to the beach with friends, but on the day itself, it rained so hard that you had to cancel it. Being depressed has to do with your mood, which is long-lasting and more general. You can say that feelings are like the weather while your mood is more like the season. If it's summer, it is generally hot. However, there is still the possibility of rain. Going back to the example about going to the beach: it would take so much effort to even start planning. You feel like you don't have the energy to think about where to go. You feel like you are being a burden just by asking friends to go out with you. And when it rains on the day itself after months of struggling to make the plan, it just rains and everything is ruined. You feel like you the world is telling you that you don't deserve to be happy, and so it decided to cast rain right on the day you were finally able to plan to go out of your room.

Many times there is a reason for when you are sad. Being depressed is most likely a disease, but I do agree, they do most of the time feel the same.

Depression quite nearly sucks the life out of everything. It is constant and obstructive , while sadness is temporary, it does not make your life seem dull and only mildly obtrusive.

Depression and sadness can seem similar, but are two different things. When you're depressed, you are sad, but when you're sad, you're not automatically depressed. I would suggest talking to a doctor, they can help diagnose you with depression if necesarry.

Depression is something that is constant. It keeps on coming back and it doesn't go away very often.

For one thing, depression tends to last a lot longer than just being sad does. You could also see an expert and they will consider whether anything in the environment in which you live might have just made you sad or not.

You feel like you can't function getting out of bed is hard. Never having energy frequent crying sadness

Losing all interest in doing the easiest things you used to do prior to an incident, is a clear dead giveaway.

It's becomes very difficult for a normal person to distinguish between depression and sadness. These are two are completely different things, if you're depressed, there are a lot symptoms that are there, sadness is temporary but when a person is depressed, he/she will not be able to stay happy even when he wants to, there will be no reason to be sad. If you're still in doubt, you can even consult a doctor in that case.