Depression is experienced as feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and an inability to enjoy life. When a mood becomes depressed this is a consistent low feeling over a period of time, usually a period of three weeks or more of a consistently low mood. Most people in their lives will experience periods of depression sometimes it can be a response to a distressing event eg grief, a relationship ending, job loss, or an accumulation of disturbing events. Some people might have a genetic predisposition to depression or it can be the impact of environmental factors like attachment trauma, childhood emotional neglect, developmental trauma.
There are different levels of depression identified as:
- Mildly depressed
- Moderately depressed
- Clinical depression
Symptoms of depression:
- Outbursts of anger or emotion
- Intense feelings of sadness
- Changes in appetite either not eating or overeating
- Avoiding social contact
- Insomnia or sleeping excessively
- Suicidal thoughts and ideation
- Apathy
- Lethargy and low energy
- Lack of clarity of thought
- Inability to concentrate
- Loss of enjoyment from activities you use to enjoy
- Pessimism
- Loss of libido