The term "depression" comes from the Latin word deprimo, which means "to suppress", "to crush". This name very clearly characterizes mental illness. A person who suffers from depression feels depressed, oppressed. A bad mood is observed in such people, they lose the ability to have fun and enjoy a variety of things, and motor inhibition appears: patients become slow and lethargic.
From time to time, each of us experiences a bad mood in one situation or another, as well as a feeling of apathy. But after a short period of time, this passes, and the person returns to normal life again. As for depression, this condition does not disappear for quite a long time. Depression can drag on for weeks, months, or even years. Seriously ill patients suffer from it throughout their lives. In this article, you will learn how to recognize depression. However, first you need to understand the reasons for its appearance.
Causes of depression
Specialists identify several reasons that provoke a depressive state in a person. The main ones are divided into three groups: psychological, biological, as well as socio-cultural. Let's consider them in more detail separately.
Biological causes
Depression is very often caused by biological factors, such as genetic predisposition or heredity. As a rule, relatives of those people who have depression also often suffered from this disease.
Another cause of the disease is a violation of the metabolic process in the human body. A striking example is postpartum depression, which occurs in women under the influence of hormonal failure after the birth of a baby. Clinical tests show that sick people have reduced levels of serotonin, melatonin, and norepinephrine activity in the body.
Psychological reasons
As for the psychological causes of depression, in most cases the trigger is the stress experienced by a person. A very heavy blow can be the death of a loved one or some other tragedy. Dismissal from work, divorce, ruin can provoke an oppressed mood, which turns into a real depression over time.
Stressful chronic factors can also serve as an impetus for the development of the disease. These include failures at work, in family relationships, financial problems, dissatisfaction with life, loneliness andmuch more.
Socio-cultural reasons
The low social status of a person in society, which provokes dissatisfaction with oneself, should be considered among such reasons for the development of depression. Also, a sharp transition from a high social bar to a lower one can serve as an impetus. In addition, different cultures have their own rules and traditions, inconsistency with which can cause condemnation in society, as well as lead a person to depression.
How to recognize depression?
To diagnose this disease, you should seek help from a psychotherapist or psychologist. It is he who offers his patients special tests that reveal such a disorder.
How to recognize depression using these tests? They are a list of questions that the patient should answer as honestly as possible. In addition, you can find such questions yourself in the literature on psychology. It is very convenient to take tests online. It is only necessary to write down your answers on paper in order to calculate the results later. After passing such a test, you will be able to find out if you suffer from a similar disorder or not.
When talking about how to recognize depression, we should highlight the best tests, according to experts. These include:
- Beca.
- Zunga.
- Shihana.
- Bekhterev Research Institute.
- Spielberg.
- Hospital Depression and Anxiety Scale.
- SLC-90 depression scale.
- Depression ScaleDEPS.
In addition to these tests for detecting depression, you can recognize the disease by some symptoms.
Depression symptoms
So, how to recognize depression in women and men? This disease is characterized not only by bad mood and depression, but also by other symptoms that are used for diagnosis. This disease negatively affects the emotional sphere, as well as the body as a whole, including even the physical plane. So, how to recognize depression in women and men?
Emotional manifestations
A person who is depressed is constantly experiencing longing, depression, suffering and despair. It seems to him that life loses its meaning. A person feels himself unnecessary and miserable to anyone. He begins to experience anxiety and anxiety, often he is haunted by a feeling of some kind of impending disaster. The patient cannot relax, and the body is constantly in tension.
If you do not know how to recognize depression in a teenager or adult, then pay attention to the fact that during this state a person is very irritable. Any little thing can bring him to tears or piss him off. A sense of guilt begins to grow in a person: he reproaches himself for all the troubles that happen to loved ones or to himself.
Depression provokes constant dissatisfaction with one's life. The patient's self-esteem is greatly reduced. It begins to seem as if he is not capable of anything either at work or in the family. A person is tormented by self-doubt. Patients losemotivation, desire to work, as well as to do some other things.
Those things that used to give the patient pleasure are no longer interesting to him. The patient loses joy even from those activities that he previously loved most. With severe depression, people lose the ability to experience both negative and positive emotions.
Sleep disturbance
How to recognize the approach of depression yet? What should you pay attention to? Sleep disturbance is one of the most common symptoms. The patient is not able to fall asleep for a long time, often wakes up, and therefore gets up in the morning sleepy and broken. In some patients, on the contrary, drowsiness is constantly observed. The patient can sleep for many hours, but sleep does not bring any satisfaction. Such a state indicates that consciousness is trying to distance itself from real life, to run away from existing problems, to plunge into a slumber.
Appetite
But how to recognize whether a person is depressed or lazy? In parallel with prolonged sleep, the patient has a violation of appetite. Often such patients complain of a lack or decrease in the desire to eat, and the food seems to be very tasteless. In some patients, on the contrary, the appetite increases significantly, as a result of which they consume everything in a row. In some cases, hunger wakes people up even at night, causing them to get up and go to the refrigerator. Patients are often constipated for this reason.
Physiological symptoms
Answering the question of whetherhow to recognize depression in men and women, you should pay attention to the fact that the disease often provokes unpleasant sensations at the physiological level: shortness of breath, palpitations, pain in the abdomen, muscles, back, joints, as well as headaches and dizziness. These symptoms are easy to confuse with other ailments, but an experienced specialist can quickly identify a psychological illness based on these signs.
What else do you need to know about how to recognize depression in a person? During this state, people experience a breakdown, get tired quickly even from simple, everyday activities. What used to be easy to do now requires a lot of effort. The feeling of fatigue does not go away even after a person has had enough sleep. The movements will be slow, inhibited.
Patients also have reduced sex drive. Sometimes depression provokes complete indifference to your partner.
Features of behavior
As mentioned earlier, postpartum depression is very common in women. How to recognize a similar psychological state in other people? First of all, you need to pay attention to behavior. Depression makes people passive, takes away their motivation for any kind of activity. Patients are hardly involved in any business, it is difficult for them to focus on something.
People are able to withdraw into themselves without leaving their homes. They are no longer interested in meeting friends, vacation trips, parties. They don't want to see anyone, theydifficult to communicate with other people. Due to a decrease in self-esteem, patients feel uncomfortable in society. They think that others perceive them as losers or laugh at them, so they try to avoid other people. At the same time, communication with others becomes uninteresting for those who suffer from depression.
Patients can sit or lie in the same place for a long time without doing anything. They don't want to get up. Quite often, a sad and painful state provokes the fact that patients begin to get involved in alcohol, psychoactive or narcotic substances. Thus, they try to alleviate the condition, but these methods give only a temporary effect, after which the depression only intensifies.
Thought Signs
How to recognize hidden depression in your loved ones? First of all, pay attention to the fact that such a condition impairs memory, as well as the ability to concentrate on something. Patients cannot concentrate on anything, and any mental actions are rather difficult. They become distracted, they have inhibition of any thought process.
How to recognize depression in yourself and loved ones? A sign of depression will also be that the person finds it difficult to make any decisions. Such people think for a long time, hesitate. They are constantly pestered by some gloomy thoughts about their lives, about themselves, as well as about the world as a whole. It begins to seem as if the colors of life have faded, and nothing good will happen in the future. Even if patients understand that negative thoughtsprovoked by the disease, they are unable to get rid of them.
So now you know how to recognize depression. Symptoms, as you can see, relate not only to the emotional background, but also to the physical. However, you should pay attention to the fact that experts distinguish several varieties of depression.
Types of depression
The most common varieties are:
- Endogenous depression. This type is provoked by biological factors, as well as various disorders of the nervous system. In addition, endogenous depression may not be associated with unpleasant situations in the life of the patient. The patient becomes apathetic, withdrawn, loses interest in life.
- Reactive depression. Occurs as a reaction to some traumatic event. If a tragedy has occurred in a person’s life, then he can get this type of depression. Pathology is very easy to diagnose, since in most cases the patient himself knows about the causes of its occurrence.
- Masked depression. This species is not in vain received this name. Such depression has the peculiarity of disguising itself as other ailments. The patient often complains of heart problems, stomach pains, headaches, sexual disorders, cycle disorders (in women).
- Seasonal. This type of disease is directly related to the time of year. Many people are currently suffering from this type of depression. However, in most cases they do not attach any importance to the disease, believing that it is onlymanifestation of bad mood. Mostly observed in winter and autumn.
- Anxious depression. This disease provokes a feeling of fear, anxiety and anxiety in a person. Such people become aggressive, unbalanced. In addition, a person may develop suicidal tendencies.
- Dysthymia. This kind of disease is chronic. The symptoms are similar to the acute form of depression, but it has been observed for a long time - more than 2 years. The patient constantly has a feeling of depression and longing.
- Bipolar. This type of disease is characterized by a transition from a state of strong excitement to depression and melancholy. In addition to mood swings, confusion appears, as well as impaired perception.
- Depressive stupor. This type of disease is considered one of the most severe. The patient lies all the time, looking into the void, refuses food, does not make contact with others.
Based on the foregoing, we can conclude that depression is a very serious disease that needs timely and competent treatment. The absence of it can provoke sad consequences.
