What is Depression?

Depression is a real illness, not to be taken lightly. It's not something that's just "in your head", and is an illness that requires medical help. Generally, depression is defined as feeling "down", having a low mood, feeling "hopeless" conistently for at least two weeks (but it can also last much longer than that.)

Depression takes on many different forms. Everyone that suffers from depression will have slightly different symptoms-- just because you don't suffer from all the symptoms listed of depression doesn't mean you aren't depressed.

Depression affects more women than men, though because of cultural attitudes--women can be emotional, and men don't cry--many men are afraid or think it is weak to acknowledge they have a problem with depression, so the statistics might be a bit different if men were less reluctant to admit to having a problem with depression. It is common for women to get depressed after giving birth to a baby-- this is called postpartum depression.

Some people get depressed only during certain months of the year, usually in the winter months. This is called Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD for short, and one possible reason for this is the reduced sunlight in the winter months.

Another type of depression is bipolar disorder. This is when someone experiences extreme mood swings--it is a cycle of being very depressed, followed by periods of mania (lots of energy, tendency to engage in reckless behavior, shopping sprees, etc.), and then back to depression, and the cycle continues. This is another serious disorder and also requires treatment from a medical professional.

Depression usually first starts affecting people between the ages of 15 and 30, but can be with people for a lifetime. This is not a reason to be discouraged though--there are ways that work very well to keep the depression at bay and still live a normal life. Depression (especially Bipolar Disorder) can run in families.

GOOD NEWS! There are very effective ways to treat depression, so even if you feel very low, it is possible to get help and stop letting depression control your life! Methods of treatment are discussed more on the following pages, but the most common treatments are medication and "talk therapy"--and often the best results come from doing both.

Continue to Am I Depressed? »