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Mental health problems can affect anyone, regardless of age, gender, wealth, or profession. Mental health issues are health conditions involving changes in emotion, thinking, or behaviour and are characterized by distress or problems functioning in social settings. You may call it depression, a feeling of self-worthlessness, low self-esteem, self-hate, guilt, anxiety, or lack of purpose. But the good news is that you can come out of depression and deal with your failures.
Yes, you can reclaim your life back!
"There is no health without mental health."
If you are facing issues hindering your growth and preventing you from exhibiting normal social behaviour, you are not alone.
A WHO report says that one in four people worldwide is affected by mental or neurological disorders at some point in their lives. But what it does not say is that you can come out of depression successfully.
But are you really depressed? Are you sure it is not loneliness or sadness? There are a few typical signs of depression that you should be aware of so that you avoid falling into the trap of pseudo-depression.
How to know if you are depressed?
A few clear signs of depression can help you isolate depression from sadness or loneliness, such as extended sadness, loss of interest in life, mental loss of energy, physical fatigue, etc.
Everyone has insecurities, fears, and anxiety in life, and everyone experiences failure, but when it causes neurodivergence in your behaviour, it is a matter of concern. And if it lasts for a long time, it can cause depression.
Depression differs from loneliness or sadness; you should not confuse it with the same. Depression and sadness may feel similar, but they are different. While sadness or loneliness can be passing emotions and are temporary, depression is a long-term mood disorder. Depression causes symptoms that affect how you feel, think, and handle daily activities.
So, how to know if you are depressed? And how is depression different from sadness and loneliness?
There are three key identifiers of depression that clearly distinguish it from sadness and loneliness. If you can relate to one or more of the signs below, you may suffer from depression.
- Pervasive sadness: One of the key distinguishing factors of depression is pervasive and prolonged sadness that extends beyond two weeks.
- Anhedonia: Another factor that marks depression is a general loss of interest in activities you previously enjoyed.
- Persistent Fatigue: When you are depressed, it is not uncommon for you to feel persistent fatigue, loss of energy, and decline in motivation.
How is depression different from sadness or loneliness?
Depression is a common but serious mood disorder. It causes severe symptoms that affect how you feel, think, and handle daily activities. Depression and sadness may feel similar, but they are different. Sadness is a passing emotion. If someone with depression wants help, avoid saying things like “go watch a movie.” It can actually make the other person sadder. Loneliness, on the other hand, reflects how you feel about your relationship. A pervasive feeling of sadness, guilt, and hopelessness, prevailing over 14 days, is the most distinguishing feature of depression.
Causes of depression
Depression can affect anyone. People can be depressed for various reasons, such as trauma, grief, failure, breakup, divorce, etc. But the most common reason for depression is failure and loss. The failure can be professional or personal. While people take professional failure like business or job loss very personally, personal failure, like a failed marriage, dysfunctional family, or broken love relationship, can be equally fatal.
Depression can also seep in due to grief (loss of a person) or loss of material possessions as well. We all experience pain and loss, and these feelings are not alien to us. Most of us successfully overcome them. However, some people are not able to overcome these life events. They are so deeply impacted that they just can’t get out of it. They get stuck in a loop that pulls them back into it again and again. As a result, these people find it difficult to return to normalcy in their social lives and exhibit a deviation in cognizance.
You may want to move ahead in life, but past experiences, failures, and setbacks keep pushing you back. So you isolate yourself from the external world, keep obsessing with things in the past, and find yourself in an endless loop of determining every mistake, where you went wrong, and how you could have dealt with it.
Depression stops you from being who you really are and prevents you from being the best version of yourself.
So, do not ever take depression lightly!
Here are a few general causes of depression:
- Recent traumatic events such as a job loss, accident, divorce, grief, etc.
- Stressful situations such as poverty, financial loss, and family problems.
- Serious physical illness injury.
- Divorce, breakup, end of a relationship.
- Recent death of a loved one, family, relative, or friend.
- Childhood trauma and problems such as abuse, loss of parent, or divorce of parents, etc.
- Physical disability, personal weakness, nervousness.
- An illness of the brain.
- Hormonal changes, recent pregnancy, menopause in women, or andropause in men.
- Genetic predisposition such as depression history in the family.
- Conflicts at the workplace or in relationships.
- Substance abuse.
- Poor nutrition is also one of the causes of depression.
Early signs of depression
These are a few early signs of depression that you need to watch very carefully:
- You often find yourself struggling daily to forgive yourself.
- You often blame yourself or others for your current situation.
- You have will issues, lack motivation, and have lost all interest in daily chores and hobbies.
- You find it difficult to leave your room and face the world.
- You have isolated yourself from everyone, both emotionally and physically.
- You often feel fatigued and find it difficult to sleep or sleep too much.
- You are experiencing changes in appetite, like not feeling hungry at all or eating a lot leading to a drastic fluctuation in your weight.
- You have frequent anxiety issues.
- You often have uncontrollable emotions like frequent mood swings.
- You sometimes have suicidal thoughts.
- You have persistent feelings of helplessness, worthlessness, and hopelessness.
As mentioned above, you may have depression and other related mental health issues if you have one or more persistent symptoms. Identifying depression is the first step to learning how to deal with depression and then coming out of depression to help you move towards healing and recovery.
Why do people not talk about mental health issues and take them seriously?
People often avoid speaking about mental health issues and do not seek any intervention. But why? Sometimes the reason is your ego and shame, and other times people are shy or hesitant about discussing their mental health problems as they fear judgment and mockery.
Yes, indeed, the society we live in does not take mental health properly. Mental health issues are considered taboo, looked down upon, made fun of, and not taken seriously.
So, here are the three reasons why people are afraid of discussing mental health openly:
1. Ego and shame
It is quite normal for you to blame yourself for your failures and hate yourself for not being more intelligent and cautious in the past. It can be difficult to forgive yourself. You may also attribute your failures to others (also called scapegoating) only to make you resentful and bitter.
It is natural not to be able to forgive yourself, and the pain can be real! So, you lose hope, blame yourself for all the mishappenings, and avoid seeking help as you fear people will judge you.
Sometimes, your ego can also prevent you from reaching out to friends and family, as you believe you have never asked for help, so why now?
2. Stigma, discrimination, and neglect
Treatments are available, but most people with a known mental disorder never seek help from a health professional due to neglect, fear of stigma, or discrimination.
There are a lot of stigmas attached to mental health disorders, along with prevalent discrimination in our society. Moreover, there is an apparent neglect of mental health issues that discourages people from reaching out to mental health professionals for preventive care and treatments.
Mental health issues are not considered severe medical conditions, and people pass them off as a temporary phase.
Where there is neglect, there is little or no understanding. Where there is no understanding, there is neglect. People do not understand the importance of mental health. Even if a person dealing with it wants to talk about it, people ignore it and pass off depression as a temporary emotional disturbance. It is quite clear that neglect is quite prevalent in our society. – Dr. Roli Misra
3. Lack of information and awareness on mental health
Lack of awareness and information about mental health issues and access to mental health services and facilities are significant deterrents to effectively handling mental health issues. These things bar people suffering from mental disorders from seeking out timely interventions. People do not even have a basic awareness of the signs of depression, let alone how to deal with depression.
In fact, it is just not for people suffering from depression. The government and society should unite to sensitize people about mental health disorders and normalize them.
How to come out of depression?
1. Let time heal you
Give yourself some time after you have gone through some life-changing events in your life. It would be best if you had some introspection to internalize and understand what went wrong as you take an inward journey. Leaving a few things on time is often better than fighting them daily. So, accept your situation, learn from your mistakes, and move ahead in life. Time is the biggest healer, so you can rely upon it.
Read Also: How to let go of the past? 11 powerful tips for moving on in life.
2. Seek out help
Seek help from your immediate family and friends, and do not hesitate to do so. There are people who love and care for you. All you need to do is to reach out to them.
When you know about the people who care for you, it can make you more hopeful. And if hope is alive, everything else is alive. Love, kindness, patience, and compassion coming from family and your partner will do wonders and take away all your pain. And eventually, it will help you come out of depression.
3. Gain perspective on gratitude
Practicing gratitude and internalizing how your hardships are objectively easier compared to countless humans out there who have faced terrible things like poverty, slavery, grief, job loss, etc., will make you feel better about yourself.
Everyone’s journey is different, and so is yours. But for some, the hardships are unimaginable, and so is their journey. When you look at those people, you gain the right perspective and start healing.
So, to overcome depression, you should practice gratitude and thank people who have been there for you through thick and thin. Also, thank God for such a beautiful life you have been blessed with. Remember that privilege is an important caveat, and be mindful of your privileges.
4. Find pleasures in small things
It goes a long way. Discover your source of pleasure in smaller things. Do not link your happiness to material things or people. Link it with smaller and more meaningful things in life. And eventually, you will start feeling happy. Always remember that happiness is a choice, and you must choose it daily. When you are depressed, you struggle with happiness. But when you consciously try to engage with things that give you even a few seconds of happiness, you train your brain to choose happiness every day. Ultimately, a day will come when you free yourself from depression and reclaim yourself back.
5. Seek meaning in life
Finding meaning or a higher purpose in life is of supreme importance. No matter how harsh your circumstances are, if you have a purpose in life, you will still find reasons to continue and deal with your current situation. Do not link this meaning and purpose to material possessions.
Your purpose in life should be your core value, and do not make it about shallow things.
I remember one of my batchmates from MBA secured a job at one of the best MNCs. A few years later, we connected only to know he was unhappy working for the corporates. Instead, he wanted to give society back and go for his inner calling. And it was teaching!
So, he finally took a career in teaching in a government primary school after his first corporate job to pursue his passion for helping poor children to chase eternal peace, which to him, was his meaning in life.
He has finally found his meaning in life, which keeps him going. If you find yours, you can beat your depression for once and all.
6. Accept your imperfect self
No one is perfect, and seeking perfection in life is being too harsh on yourself. Getting close to perfection is a gradual process and will happen only with time. So, if you have failed, remember that you are not perfect. But you can try again or even change your path. Success is not chasing your goals and ambitions. Instead, success is about being happy and chasing your well-being.
So, learn to forgive yourself, move forward, and start afresh. Unburden yourself and let happiness chase you.
7. Try meditation and exercise
We all know exercise is good for our bodies, but it is equally effective in dealing with depression, anxiety, and stress. As you work out, there are physiological changes in your brain, like the release of endorphins, which help fight mild to moderate depression. Likewise, meditation creates positive space in our minds, prepares the brain for stressful situations, and helps us fight depression.
A healthy body breeds a healthy mind, and a healthy mind nourishes a healthy body!
8. Seek therapy or professional help
Break the mental barriers of ego and shame, leave behind the social stigma, and forget the neglect by others. Take your life into your own hands, and seek professional help. Only you can save yourself, so take the first step in the right direction.
If you are injured, you will immediately rush to a doctor, so why not treat your mental condition asap and seek professional help? The earlier you seek help, the better it is. And a trained psychologist can help you out in ways you can’t even imagine.
What not to say to people who are undergoing depression?
Okay, so what to say and what not to say to people who are depressed or showing early signs of depression?
Here is a list of statements you should avoid saying to people who are depressed, regardless of how well-meaning you believe they are as they can cause more harm than help:
- You are strong; you will get over it. Making such statements can make them guarded, and they may become more cautious when expressing themselves. It is precisely the opposite of how you want them to behave.
- Go out for a walk to shake it off. They may lack the motivation to do so and are incapable of doing so despite encouragement. So making such statements won’t be an intelligent bet.
- Shrug that negativity and be positive. They are in a negative mindset and cannot help themselves. If they can become positive by themselves, why would there be any depression? And when you use these words, it can further push them towards hopelessness.
- Sleep on it, and you will be fine. You may say things like eat something good, cheer yourself up, watch something positive and sleep over it. You will forget about it. It is not as easy as it sounds. Losing interest in doing anything good will further add to their guilt.
I want to sum it up with the saying :
We only have one life. Please keep it simple.
If you are missing somebody, please call.
If you want to meet up, invite them.
If you want to be understood, explain and share with them.
If you have questions, ask.
If you don’t like something, please speak up.
If you like something, share it.
If you want something, ask for it.
And if you love someone, tell them.
Disclaimer: The information provided herein is intended for your general knowledge only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice or treatment for specific medical conditions. Without consulting a qualified healthcare provider, you should not use this information to diagnose or treat a health problem or disease. Please consult your healthcare provider for any questions or concerns regarding your condition.
