Mental Depression

Contemporary age is the age of challenges, challenges which are in context to one’s education, one’s profession and one’s interpersonal relations.

About 800,000 people commit suicide worldwide every year, of these 135,000 (17%) are residents of India, a nation with 17.5% of world population. Between 1987 to 2007, the suicide rate increased from 7.9 to 10.3 per 100,000, with higher suicide rates in southern and eastern states of India.

What can be of a greater context of sorrow that a person reaches a critical point radioactive enough to extinguish his very own existence! These are the extreme cases of mental depression. Multiple times more are the person who lie in the state of severe depression and carry out their livelihood in the similar melancholic fashion. A mental makeover is required to raise out the person going down to the graves on his own will.

Depression is the feeling of extraordinary sadness and dejection. The symptoms include psycho-motor retardation, loss of initiative, pessimistic outlook, feeling of sin/guilt, insomnia or hypersomnia, loss of appetite, loss of self-esteem or development of negative self concept, social withdrawal etc. The person looses interest in almost all the activities and faces difficulty in concentration. Recurrent thoughts of death flash his mind. The most severely depressed people may experience psychotic symptoms including delusion and hallucinations.

Most of the above symptoms must be present all day and nearly everyday for two or more consecutive weeks for diagnosis to be applicable. Most cases of depression clear up even without treatment in a matter of months and the average duration of untreated episode is between 8-10 months. The disorder can begin at any age but the most typical period is mid 20s.

There are several sub-types of depression.

The melancholic types are characterized by early morning awakening, loss of appetite and weight, inappropriate or excessive guilt, psychomotor retardation and severe anhedonia.

Chronic types are those which last for two or more years.

Catatonic cases are characterized by purposeless behavior and the person may stay fixed in bizarre postures. They may mimic every movement someone else has made (echopraxia) or engage in echolalia- a parrot like repetition of other people’s speech.

Causes and treatment of depression to be followed in the next blog…………..!