What is depression?

Depression can affect anyone, regardless of age or gender. The term depression is an umbrella term for a wide range of symptoms from low moods, feeling blue to being unable to perform the normal functions of everyday living.

Depression seems to be increasing in all age groups. Women tend to have a higher depression rate than men. Depression is more common amongst children that have grown up with a parent who is depressed.

Young mothers feel isolated and left out of the social scene if they have to give up work to look after their children especially in nuclear families. Menopause, weight gain, hypertension, growing older, marriage or relationship problems are contributing factors to depression.

Men tend to experience depression with job loss, retirement, being by passed for promotion, marital discord, divorce, growing older and perhaps experiencing health problems.

According to a recent newspaper report, a centre to treat children as young as three is to be set up in a south London hospital. Children with learning disability, certainly those who are bullied at school and subjected to the pressure to do well in the wide array of subjects in the curriculum, can experience a sense of despair and frustration. Of course, not everyone who experience these pressure of problems succumb to depression.

Symptoms

• Sleep problems, inability to sleep or sleeping too much
• Problems with eating – loss of appetite or over eating
• A lowered sex drive, even impotence
• Fatigue, no desire to get out of bed or to do anything
• Anxiety
• Finding no pleasure in life
• Feeling hopeless, helpless, worthless
• Agitation/restlessness
• Inability to concentrate, to think clearly, to focus and concentration may suffer
• Having poor judgement
• Poor memory
• Difficulty making decisions

Types of depression

• Ante natal depression
• Post natal depression
• Clinical depression
• Common depression or Dysthymia – chronic discontent

Treatment

In my experience as a therapist, depression responds well to a combination of hypnoanalysis, NLP(neurolinguistic programming) and psychotherapy, with an individualised programmme designed to lift repressed emotions as well as providing stratgies to change these maladaptive ways of thinking and coping skills for the immediate as well as long term future.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS