Understanding the Symptoms of Depression
Many people suffer from depression every year and many don’t understand why. Doctors are now linking the effects to a chemical imbalance in the brain that triggers specific feelings. For some, depression comes and goes with seasons, and others it’s a slowly developing process. Understanding the symptoms is the first key to getting the help you need and get you feeling better.
One of the major symptoms you will become aware and is also what most people link with depression is sadness. We all get sad, but if you experience prolonged periods of sadness or feeling down it’s the leading symptom in diagnosing depression. The sadness may present itself as though you don’t want to do anything, you feel down for no apparent reason, or don’t find any of your normal hobbies or daily activities enjoyable.
The next major symptom is loss of interest. Much linked to the sadness, you loose interest in your favorite activities like reading, biking, playing games, or exercising. The reason this is linked to sadness is due to the fact that if you suddenly don’t find anything you love fun anymore, it will often make you sad or even contribute more to your sadness.
When you loose your interest in the things you love you may find yourself doing less and less throughout your day. This may spark in the third major symptom which is loss of energy. Even though you may be doing less, you may find yourself having even less energy than when you did more. Tiredness is also associated with this. Having less energy to do things may also lead you into not wanted to do anything because of your tiredness which is highly common when handling depression.
The times and hours you sleep may also be a major symptom. A change in your sleeping schedule such as not being able to sleep normal hours, or over sleeping during the day. These changes will also contribute to your hunger, which will cause your diet to change dramatically. You may be over eating for the comfort or because of the new sleep schedule. You may also experience lack of hunger. This is linked to the chemical imbalance and your body may never show you signs, such as a stomach ache, and due to your lack of wanting to do things you enjoy (food), you may realize you’ve gone a whole day without eating.
Feelings go up in the air for everyone. When you find yourself going up and down more than usual or experience feelings of worthlessness or excessive stress, these can also be linked to depression as a symptom. Feelings such as suicide or death are extreme feelings and are also strong indicators you may suffer from depression.
When you know the symptoms you can recognize what is going on with your body and mind. Getting the help you need, and solving the problem to get back to feeling like you.