Suffering from Depression? YOU ARE NOT ALONE

Depression is a common medical illness. It is NOT a sign of personal weakness. It's not something you can just "snap out of." It's an illness that requires professional treatment. Symptoms of Depression affect our thoughts, feelings, relationships and even body functions. Depression is not only just a negative feeling about things in life. Everyone feels sad or low sometimes, but these feelings usually pass with a little time. When suffering from depression you can have a low mood every day accompanied by other negative symptoms that last for at least two weeks. These symptoms can become so severe that they will interfere with your normal day-to-day activities.

Some factors include:

• Brain chemistry
• Learned patterns of thinking and feeling
• Genes inherited from family
• Life stressors, ether ongoing or in crisis situations

Symptoms can affect day-to-day life and can become very distressing.

• Persistent sadness or low mood. This may be with or without weepiness.
• Marked loss of interest or pleasure in activities, even for activities that you normally enjoy.

• Disturbed sleep compared with your usual pattern. This may be difficulty in getting off to sleep, or waking early and being unable to get back to sleep. Sometimes it is sleeping too much.
• Change in appetite. This is often a poor appetite and weight loss. Sometimes the reverse happens with comfort eating and weight gain.
• Tiredness (fatigue) or loss of energy.
• Agitation or slowing of movements.
• Poor concentration or indecisiveness. (difficult to read, work, etc.) Even small tasks can seem difficult.
• Feelings of worthlessness, or excessive, or inappropriate guilt.
• Recurrent thoughts of death. This is not usually a fear of death, more a preoccupation with death and dying. For some people despairing thoughts such as "life's not worth living" or "I don't care if I don't wake up" are common. Sometimes these thoughts progress into thoughts and even plans for suicide.

• Pinpoint life events that contribute to their depression and help them find ways to change, accept, or adapt to those situations.
• Set realistic goals for the future.
• Identify distorted thought processes or unhelpful behaviors that contribute to feelings of hopelessness and helplessness.
• Develop skills to cope with symptoms and problems and identify or prevent future episodes of depression.