Adult Depression
Uploaded by mumsa1 on Feb 01, 2012
Depression affects 2 in 3 adults at some point in their lives.
In this article:
What is depression?
Causes
Treatments
Symptoms
Diagnosis
Advice & Support
What is depression?
Depression is a mental illness which can affect anyone and strike at any time.
A distressing condition of which experiencing an abnormal state of sadness is the core symptom, depression can be a hugely debilitating illness. Until recent years, it has also been much misunderstood, with sufferers often being told by family, friends and colleagues to ‘pull their socks up’, or to ‘just snap out of it’. Thankfully, due to greater awareness about depression, these days sufferers are not treated in such a stigmatised way and are able to make use of a range of treatments and self-help options which have all been proved effective in coping with and even overcoming the illness.
Types of depression
Often labelled by healthcare professionals as the ‘common cold’ of psychological problems, depression is a mood disorder. It is the most common affective disorder which accounts for 50 per cent of all psychiatric hospital admissions.
Depression tends to run in families and symptoms are similar across cultures, genders and ages. This suggests that biological mechanisms play a strong part in the development of depression.
The two main types of depression are Uni-Polar (persistent low moods) and Bi-Polar Disorder (or Manic Depression) which consists of alternating bouts of long depression and mania.
Symptoms
Symptoms of depression include:
Low mood
Loss of interest in life
Loss of enjoyment
Lack of motivation, energy, appetite and ability to concentrate
Sleeping problems
People with depression can also experience physical symptoms such as aches and pains, heart palpitations, headaches and chest pains.
Where depression is particularly severe, sufferers may resort to suicide. Worryingly, having come to the decision to commit suicide, the sufferer can experience an improvement of mood – masking their intentions to those around them (who may have been able to help them) through appearing ‘on the mend’.
Causes
The cause of depression is not known. However, many clinical psychologists worldwide suggest that depression may develop where an individual:
suffers a loss of status (such as losing a job, or relationship partner or a bereavement)
perhaps has a genetic predisposition to developing the illness (one of their parents or grandparents suffered from depression and so the vulnerability to the next generation developing the illness is ‘passed down’)
is under a lot of stress (through being under pressure to meet a target at work, for example, or through struggling to cope with paying household...