How do you know if you are depressed?

Depression affects most of us from time to time, and it can be low level or serious enough to stop us functioning properly.

More women appear to suffer from it, but that could be because they look for help more quickly or recognise it. men may just try to get on with life and bury their head to the affects of depression.

The thing about depression is that if it gets a hold of you, it just does not go away. What kind of help do you look for? Either you down the drug route which often takes weeks to take affect and also there are side effects too. There is also concern about how addictive these types of drugs can be which means when you try to come off them you may experience worse side effects.

Or, you can go down the therapy route and explore what causes you to feel depressed.

Reactive depression can be cause by significant emotional events and experiences that have happened to you. Job loss, relationship breakdowns, moving home etc etc. This is where you suddenly feel depressed and can identify the reason for doing so.

Endogenous depression is not triggered by an event, but can have roots that go way back in your life and have never been dealt with.

Mild depression usually has just a little impact on your life. Moderate depression has significant impact and severe you would daily life nearly impossible. Your job would be affected, you may not want to get out of bed, wash or eat.

Some illnesses cause depression and some prescriptive medication can also cause depressed moods. Drugs such as Beta Blockers do have such side effects. Its true to say that often we take one drug to help with one thing and then end up taking a whole cocktail of other drugs to counteract the first drug.

Taking cannabis and or cocaine, or alcoholism has significant effects on the chemistry in our brain. So we drink alcohol to drown our sorrows or numb the emotional pain, only for it to cause depression later.


People often find that both drug therapy and emotional therapy with a therapist to be more effective.

If you answer yes to more than a few of these questions, you may have some kind of depression happening. Remember, scientists only know that lack of the chemical serotonin causes depression, but what causes in the imbalance to begin with?

Do you have continuous low moods or bouts of sadness?

No motivation and very little interest in day to day things

Feel snappy with people or irritable with others?

Feelings of worthlessness

Rejection?

Guilt feelings

Suicidal thoughts, (Life would be better without me, I can't cope with all I have to each day)

One minute you feel up and the next you feel very down

Lack of confidence

Difficulty in making decisions

Tired all the time and lack of concentration

Crying a lot and feelings of doom and gloom as if someone may tell you any moment that something dreadful has happened

If you think you are depressed, take action now and do something positive about it. It will not go away on its own.