Signs
Depression affects all age groups, from children to elderly people. Depression, like all illnesses, has a pattern of signs and symptoms.
Not everybody who is depressed shows all of them, and having one or two doesn’t necessarily mean that you are depressed. The major signs and symptoms are:
• Feelings of unhappiness that don’t go away
• Losing interest in life
• Becoming unable to enjoy anything
• Finding it hard to make even simple decisions
• Feeling utterly tired
• Feeling restless and agitated
• Losing appetite and weight (some people find they do the reverse and put on weight)
• Difficulty in sleeping
• Waking up earlier than usual (typically around two hours), or oversleeping for some people
• Loss of sexual appetite
• Losing self-confidence
• Feeling useless, inadequate and hopeless
• Avoiding other people
• Feeling irritable
• Feeling worse at a particular time of day, usually mornings
• Thinking of suicide, or hurting yourself (this is common in depression). This is much better to talk about this than ignore it.
Despite popular belief, asking someone who is suicidal to talk about it does not make them more likely to hurt themselves. Thus, for some people, just having someone listen to them can save their life. Brain chemistry
Studies have shown that people who are depressed have chemical changes in certain parts or pathways of the brain. These chemical changes, whether or not, are the cause of depression or the result is not known.
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