Depression: A curable illness

Happiness, sadness, success, failure and hardships, they altogether make life. Some people face hardships and tensions with great patience and courage while others are affected by them physically and mentally. Also they get physical problems which are usually hard to overcome without some proper treatment. Depression rate is increasing in our country with increasing social problems like unemployment, terrorism, divorce and inflation. Depression is one of the most common mental problems. Depression is mostly found in women and aged men and it is the major disease among all psychological diseases.

Depression is the sad condition of mood in which the person feels anxiety, disappointment and lack of interest in the daily routine of life. If this condition prolongs for two weeks then this is called depression. This illness affects the personality and behavior of the person. This is the disturbed condition of mood which affects the decision ability and social relations of the person. The term ‘depression’ is usually used by the upper class of society with great pride for instance, a person with a temporary bad mood is said to be in depression. But remember, depression is a mental disease and psychologists diagnose this disease after taking the case history of the patient’s life. Then a thorough medical checkup of the patient has been taken in which the symptoms of depression within the patient has been checked.

The symptoms of depression include sadness, anxiety, provoking condition of mood, serious disappointment, sense of complex, lack of interest in daily activities of life, getting sick of life, crying over small things, insomnia, hyposomnia, no feel of hunger or increase of hunger, significant increase or decrease of weight, fear of dieing or wish for dieing, complaints of physical problems, thinking about suicide or making suicidal attempts, difficulty to concentrate and taking decisions, restlessness, lack of interest in relations and laziness or extreme excitement.

There are three reasons of depression like other psychological diseases i.e (a) genetics (b) environment (c) deficiency of chemical substances in brain. Experts’ viewpoint is that this illness can be genetically transferred like physical diseases and the other main reason is environment. Especially the childhood environment plays an important part in illness like depression. For example in childhood parents’ death, their separation after divorce and their fight with each other, affect the children mentally. This disappointment, sadness and frustration turn out depression later on. The third important reason of depression is the deficiency of norepinephrine, serotonin and endocrine glands.

Patient of depression should inform his/her doctor about symptoms of illness in detail. Patient must take the medicine regularly. As the depression medicine is not as such simple that’s why depression patients should not stop using it without consultation of doctor.

"To Do" list for patients of depression is: