Depression or Just Blues?

Classic clinical depression is an emotional disorder characterized by three main symptoms: changes in the emotional background, inhibition of intellectual activity and motor activity. Low mood is accompanied by a feeling of hopelessness, melancholy and severe mental pain. A person is extremely pessimistic and derogatory in his assessments of himself, his position in the world around him, as well as his future. Mental activity is inhibited: a person takes a long time to collect his thoughts, cannot figure it out or concentrate. This may seem to be a sign of intellectual degradation. Motor activity is also inhibited: the movements of a person in a depressed state are slowed down, emotional expression is very poor, the facial expression looks like a frozen mask of grief with characteristic wrinkles and folds.

In addition, there are several symptoms that are considered additional signs of depression. First of all, such a symptom is a decrease in sensitivity towards other people, a kind of mental fossilization. This is an extremely powerful experience that brings additional suffering to a depressed person. Well-known symptoms of depression include self-blaming ideas and statements. The patient suffers from the consciousness of his own worthlessness, inferiority or sinfulness. Every mistake in the past grows into a huge mistake, for which you now have to pay. Physiological disorders that accompany depression include sleep disturbances, appetite disturbances, symptoms of tachycardia, constipation and other autonomic reactions.

However, most of us have had the misfortune of suffering from depression at some point in our lives, rather than clinical depression as such. Sadness, decreased energy, inability to enjoy ordinary pleasures, plus a whole range of autonomic disorders (poor appetite, sleep disturbances and self-regulation) are obvious signs of a mild form of depression. However, strictly speaking, depression is not a special form of experience, it is an emotional disorder.

Life's difficulties, stress and emotional losses, no matter how severe they may be, do not necessarily have to end in depression. In psychology, it is customary to distinguish between depression (we are not talking about a congenital endogenous form of depression) and the natural experience of loss, grief or failure. In a normal experience, a person who is deeply sad after a bereavement or serious failure does not become depressed.

The essential difference between natural grief and depression is this. In the usual grief reaction, the outside world is experienced as greatly diminished, empty, if we have lost a loved one. Or victims of a disaster, if it’s a matter of a person’s failed plans. While with depression, a person’s inner world, his essence, is experienced as partially lost or destroyed. Normally, having experienced loss or disappointment, after a certain period of time a person recovers without deforming personally. Depression has a destructive effect on the psyche: a sharp inhibition of emotions, intelligence and creative abilities has a detrimental effect on the person’s personality as a whole.

Therefore, depression is recognized as a very common, but nevertheless very destructive emotional disorder that requires psychotherapeutic intervention.