UNDERSTAND people with depression are not causing it, they cannot control it, they cannot simply “snap out” of it.
Depression is a traumatic response to an event or events, or brain chemistry not doing what it should.
A person with depression is NOT IN CONTROL of the situation and nobody chooses to be depressed.
Depression is a medically recognised disease that affects millions of people all over the world. For many of these people, the overwhelming feeling of being completely alone can be very hard to manage and they may think that there is no support for them and that there is no way out of that feeling.
Nonetheless, as many people who have been diagnosed with the depression and have undergone treatment for will know, depression is not permanent, and is something that can be dealt with, with a little bit of space to breathe and help.
Many people experience the signs and symptoms of depression but these are often not recognised and the individuals that remain undiagnosed. This is a problem as it affects their lives and the lives of those around them negatively as it is often very hard to tell what is actually going on in someone else’s head.
People with depression, most often experience insomnia, or a desire to sleep all the time, loss of appetite and libido as well as many other symptoms, their decision-making ability is often clouded by a “mental fog” that often results in the rest of their day to day lives collapsing around them which accentuates their feeling of failure or helplessness and they slip deeper into self-destructive behaviours.
These can result in an inability to work and withdrawal from friends and family, which negatively impacts their day to day lives. The cycle of depression cause and effect may continue until suicidal thoughts begin to dominate conscious and subconscious emotions.
Help is available if these individuals know how to ask for it. In some cases help means being treated by a depression counsellor, going to therapy or taking prescription anti-depressant medication to restore serotonin imbalances. In other cases, it simply means sitting down and systematically working through the list of scenarios that are compounding the discourse in their minds.
In depression colleagues, family and friends tend to not know what to do thus they tend to avoid diving in to help or make matters worse by creating further problems. This is why the role of a therapist can be so important as there is a 3rd party that is not part of the problem, almost in a parental advisory role.
Asking for help is the first step and though it is a difficult one to take as it is clouded by mental fogs and ridiculous social stigmas. The ultimate goal in treatment and therapy is to provide a safe space to regain a foothold and build the strength and the presence of mind to deal with the problems, rather than to hide and hope it goes away.
Many people that suffer from depression are fiercely independent and strong-willed individuals. Receiving outside help is not in their independent constitution and they think it is easier to live in near-suicidal states of depression than to allow another person in to actually help them.
Therapy is also a vital tool in this journey to mental health, and those who suffer from depression and seek therapy will find that just by having an objective audience to relate to can fast track their understanding of depression and how to “deal with it” on a constructive level. With this in mind, many may wonder why it is so difficult for these sufferers to ask for help. Too often, they do not understand the different stigmas and biases associated with depression, and how people with depression also often feel as though they are absolutely alone, even when they are not.
So what can sufferers of depression do?
The first step has to be asking for help, whether this is from a family member or friend, or even a therapist. Depression is not a permanent condition, and those who suffer from it are not alone, but they do need to start with help. They have options will need to dig deep to find the courage to break their independence an ask for the help they need. Sounds so simple, but in the soup of mixed emotions, it is not that simple.
Support can be the difference between depression and recovery.
After the drug addiction has passed, many former addictions become depressed. The reason for this is because when the person was on drugs, the brain created an excess of the hormone called dopamine. Dopamine is the happy hormone that provided the addict with that coveted high and the motivation behind getting high all the time.
For more on depression, support see the Recovery Direct reatment page here.