To be diagnosed with depression, an individual must have five depression symptoms every day, nearly all day, for at least 2 weeks. One of the symptoms must be a depressed mood or a loss of interest or pleasure in almost all activities. Children and adolescents may be irritable rather than sad.
There's no lab test that can diagnose depression. But your provider may order blood tests to find out if another health condition, such as anemia or thyroid disease, may be causing depression.
A PET scan can compare brain activity during periods of depression (left) with normal brain activity (right). An increase of blue and green colors, along with decreased white and yellow areas, shows decreased brain activity due to depression.
Folks with depression can laugh, have fun and experience joy while depressed. These feelings are usually short-lived, and don't count as “evidence” that someone doesn't have depression. We are all different and depression manifests differently for each person who experiences it.
A: Depression is a clinical illness, while unhappiness is a state of mind. With depression, you actually have symptoms like slowed thought and movement, a despairing sense of the future, an inability to feel pleasure or find meaning, and ongoing thoughts of suicide.
Stress, Health, and Hormones. Things like stress, using alcohol or drugs, and hormone changes also affect the brain's delicate chemistry and mood. Some health conditions may cause depression-like symptoms. For example, hypothyroidism is known to cause a depressed mood in some people.
It can impair your attention and memory, as well as your information processing and decision-making skills. It can also lower your cognitive flexibility (the ability to adapt your goals and strategies to changing situations) and executive functioning (the ability to take all the steps to get something done).
Depression episodes can be triggered by factors such as stressful events, loss, illness, lifestyle habits, and substance use.
Decreased energy, fatigue, or feeling slowed down
Most people think of the mental and emotional symptoms of depression, but it can cause physical symptoms, too. These physical symptoms often mimic other health conditions. Many people may experience low energy and fatigue.
Suicidal Thoughts: An Emergency
For people who are severely depressed, suicide is a real threat. Each year, about 46,000 people in the U.S. take their own lives, although the true number may be higher.
feel overwhelmed — unable to concentrate or make decisions. be moody — feeling low or depression; feeling burnt out; emotional outbursts of uncontrollable anger, fear, helplessness or crying. feel depersonalised — not feeling like themselves or feeling detached from situations.
- Lack of care in personal appearance: A depressed person will not care about their personal appearance and may become untidy in the way they dress. - Loss of concentration. - Failing to do things they usually enjoy doing. Physical changes - Tiredness: Someone with depression will feel tired and lethargic all the time.
Clinical depression is the more-severe form of depression, also known as major depression or major depressive disorder. It isn't the same as depression caused by a loss, such as the death of a loved one, or a medical condition, such as a thyroid disorder.
The symptoms of depression include a loss of interest in daily activities or feeling sad or hopeless and having at least four of the following symptoms: A change in eating patterns that causes either weight gain or weight loss. Sleeping too much or not enough.
Mild depression involves depressive symptoms that are considered low-grade. While many of the same symptoms of more severe depression are present, including irritability, sadness, and lack of motivation, they are often more subtle and less intense.
Share on Pinterest Symptoms of a depressive episode may include anxiety, frustration, feeling hopeless, fatigue, and a loss of interest in things once enjoyed. Symptoms of a depressive episode are more extreme than normal periods of low mood and may include: feeling sad, hopeless, or helpless.
It is not unusual to lose interest in routine activities like work, hobbies, and sex during a depression episode. Besides mood changes, depression can also cause physical symptoms such as lack of energy, difficulty sleeping, problems concentrating, and changes in appetite and weight.
Past and/or continued traumatic events. High stress situations. Drug and/or alcohol abuse. Low self-esteem, poor self-image.
Depression is a mental health condition that affects mood. It can cause intense emotions, including sadness, low self-esteem, low motivation, or feelings of guilt and worthlessness. It can also cause a lack of emotion or numbness. There is no depression symptom that is unique to women and not men.
Some people who have severe clinical depression will also experience hallucinations and delusional thinking, the symptoms of psychosis. Depression with psychosis is known as psychotic depression.
Depression may cause the release of glucocorticoid in the brain, a type of steroid that can damage the hippocampus and other areas of the central nervous system. When this occurs, you may experience symptoms associated with neurocognitive disorder (dementia), such as memory loss.