What is Depression and its symptoms?

What is depression?

Depression is a state of mind. It is a serious mental illness that involves the brain. It is the commonest psychiatric disorder in this era. Though it is a mental illness that is why it can be a lot harder to understand. Depression usually starts at the age of 15 and 30, and in much more common in female. There are many reasons why depression is more in females. It can be anything like female hormones,social and psychological factors and also due to their menstrual cycle. Depression can destroy a person through physically, mentally and emotionally in every way. In stage of depression a person loses his ability of positive thinking and sometimes a person feel emptiness. The person stops seeing good things in their life and constantly pay attention to negative things of their life.

Causes of depression

There are a variety of causes of depression including genetics, environmental, psychological and biochemical factors.

Genetics factor: It includes genetics factors which we get from our parents and ancestors.
Environmental factor: It includes all those factors that we get from our environment and people around us on a daily basis.
Psychological factors: It includes all those factors which are related to any traumatic experiences in human life. For example, job loss, relationship breakdown or financial loss or any such reason that can be a trauma for a person can lead them into depression.
Biochemical factor: It includes factors of chemical changes in the brain. When there is lack of serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine chemical in the brain caused depression.

Symptoms of depression

Deep feeling of sadness: In depression a person feels very sad all the time. Feeling of sadness in depression is different from normal sadness. In normal life, When we become sad we can recover when something good happens. But in the doldrums of depression, even if something good happens to a person, the person is not going to happy. This type of sadness is called persistent sadness.
Loosing interest in once pleasurable: People also lose interest even in their favorite type of work. People don't even have an interest in their hobby. This symptom is also called anhedonia. People who go out and roam, party which they used to enjoy before, they don't like it now. They distance themselves from social life and imprison themselves in their alone world.
Loss of concentration: People who are facing depression can never concentrate on anything. Even if they do any work, there are always negative thoughts in their minds. They are unable to do any work well due to lack of concentration. This is the reason that they fail in their work and it makes them more sad.
Appetite: In depressed patients, a symptom is also associated with their eating habit. The patients also stop feeling hungry and they stop eating. This habit makes them so thin and one of the reasons of their physical weakness. In some cases, some patients feel more hungry and they start depressive eating due to which their weight increases.
Insomnia: A person stops sleeping in depression. Throughout the night, only negative thoughts keep going in their mind. And there are some people who feel sleepy, suddenly it opens. Or it happens that they get up before their own time. And some people also get used to taking sleeping pills due to this.
Suicidal thoughts: Patient begins to think of committing suicide. They feel that their life is of no use, nothing has been kept in their life. They think it is better to die than to live. They have a feeling of worthlessness.
Feeling of guilt: There is always a feeling of guilt in them. They think they are spoiling, What they have done in their life, they have done everything bad. Always thinking about their past mistakes and make them bigger in their mind. They consider themselves guilty for every little thing.

If all these symptoms appear in a person for more than two weeks , it means that the person is facing a depression.