Depression is curable

Depression is not an illness that the average person understands. Most people think that major depression is just an extreme sadness, and that the mood can be fought off by taking positive action to cheer oneself up. But there are several types of depression. The common type is that experienced by normal persons, and is usually caused by a concrete event — losing your job, the death of a loved one, or becoming seriously ill. In these cases, there are natural feelings of unhappiness and tension and guilt. But this mood rarely persists for more than two weeks. If, however, the situation is extreme and persistent (or believed to be so by the individual) then it can cause major depression. In that situation, a vicious cycle is set up so that, even if the situation that originally caused the depression vanishes, the person finds it difficult to stop being depressed.

This condition is classified as a major depression, and it is significantly different from simply feeling down. Even major depressions come in several types. There is unipolar depression, in which the person moves from feeling extremely depressed to feeling relatively normal. There is manic depression, where the person fluctuates between deep depression and wild, disorganised hyperactivity. There is the kind of depression that is triggered by outside events and the kind that has an internal clockwork.

It is estimated that ten percent of men and 20 percent of women will experience a major depression at some point in their lives. This kind of depression brings with it great grief and great guilt.

Persons with depression don’t only feel guilty about what caused the depression, but even feel guilty about being depressed — the effect their mood has on others, wasting their life, and so on. But perhaps the worst symptom of depression is the inability to feel pleasure. And this is what the average person, who will never experience such deep dismay, usually fails to understand. People going through a major depression take no pleasure in the things that we usually consider to make life worthwhile — friendship, achievement, sex, food. As a result, depressed persons, feeling that nothing matters, are also not motivated to take the actions which can lessen or cure their depression. Fifteen percent of persons who have major depression commit suicide.

But that also means, of course, that fully 85 percent don’t. And the other good news is that half of the persons who go through a major depression will never experience such an episode ever again. And the good news for the other half is that there are now very good anti-depressant drugs, as well as a psychiatric technique called cognitive therapy which has had reasonable success in changing sufferers’ negative self-image.

If more people understood this condition, then more could be done to help those persons who experience it. Perhaps the deaths of Nadia Ashraph and Taan Maraj will encourage other sufferers to seek help, knowing that depression can be lifted. The first act, however, is recognition that there is a problem and seeking help.