Depression Hurts Everyone Around It

Have you ever thought about suicide? Have you ever felt like the world would be better off without you in it? Have you ever spent hours crying or lying in bed with your head covered up? Have you cut yourself off from friends and family? Do you spend copious amounts of time alone in your home? These are all symptoms of depression.
Clinically, the signs of depression are as follow:
• Feeling sad or tearful
• Significant loss of pleasure in life
• Weight loss or gain without trying
• Trouble sleeping
• Sleeping too much
• Agitation
• Feelings of worthlessness
• Feelings of inappropriate guilt
• Thoughts of death or suicide
Today there are medications that can prevent depression or at least temper it so that you can live a normal life but first you have to see a professional. Medication cannot be dispensed without a thorough evaluation of your health; physical and mental. When you do make an appointment with a mental health professional, be truthful. Do not hide things from your physician. Remember that a physician has to guarantee your personal privacy and cannot tell ANYONE your medical problems or about your treatment unless you allow it in writing. So, if you are afraid of someone finding out that you have sought mental health help, forget it. No one will know unless you allow it. Being depressed is not a good way for anyone to live. It causes your entire life and family to exist in a shadowy vacuum.
That having been said, there is something about some people who suffer from some sorts of depression that make those on the outside feel that they are only having a ginormous temper tantrum. These people are actually crying out in the only way that they know how. They want help and they don’t know any other way to get it than acting out because they are unable to face their depression head-on. These people often go through numerous attempts at suicide or do things to destroy their careers or lives.

Those who succeed in taking their lives never have the opportunity to face their illness and to be cured. Their families are usually the ones that pay for their actions. The suicide of a loved one because of depression can actually trigger depression in another family member if the tendency is already there. Those left behind wonder what it is that they have done to cause their loved one to leave them. They wonder what they should have done differently in their lives to make life easier for the one who couldn’t handle it. A person who has been left behind by suicide often feels as guilty as if he actually physically caused the death of that person. The guilt is so strong that, if there is already a tendency toward depression in the body, that person may fall into a deep depression him/herself. Other family members watching a person descend into deep depression after the suicide death of a loved one may not understand what is happening. They may wonder why the person continues to dwell on something they had no control over and why they cannot let it go. They have no way of knowing that the person actually feels he or she may have caused the suicide in some way.
Depression is a never ending pit. It is an insidious disease that a person cannot just “snap out of”. We now believe that chemical interactions in the brain can cause depression by disrupting communications in the message centers in the brain. Sort of like an old fashioned party-line telephone system, the brain is given many signals and doesn’t know which ones to follow. While some signals strengthen others weaken. There are several types of depression.
• Bipolar depression is a mood disorder where the person’s moods vary between manic and depressive.
• Postpartum depression is a disorder caused by the fluctuation of hormones in a post birthing female that sometimes turns the mother on the child she has borne.
• Seasonal Affective Disorder is due to seasonal variations and variations in body chemicals.
• Dysthymia is mild depression on most days lasting at least 2 years.
Watch people that you love and if they have signs of depression for a period of time you do not consider normal for whatever is happening around them, set them up with a mental health professional. Depression needs tough love and medical treatment. Don’t let someone you love be a victim.