“Love is something that teaches, so to be surrounded by knowledge means you must be loved.” Those words are written on the front of my journal. As with any type of advocacy, a very important aspect of advocacy of mental health awareness is education. How can you raise understanding of something that many people do not know about without teaching it to them? The goal of this blog is to delve into each week’s topic on “In Crisis and with Christ” more deeply. The method that I will use to accomplish this, however, will probably change week to week. Some weeks I may be more focused on internal perspectives while in others I may be focused on more public experiences. Therefore, the methods used to explore each topic will be custom fit each week.
This post, as well as the few beginning posts to come, will contain much more basic and overarching topics than future posts will. That being said, today’s topic will be the basics (symptoms, types, and risk factors) of Clinical Depression. The National Institute of Mental Health is a source that you will find often in my coming posts. It is a wonderfully clear and user-friendly website that has information on a vast array of mental health topics. It explains everything from anxiety to autism, from cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to talk therapy, or from ADD/ADHD to alzheimer's. That is why today I will be sending you to their page on clinical depression.
On this page you will see the many different symptoms that depression can cause. There are so many different symptoms that each person’s struggle with the illness will be unique to them. No one can have all of the symptoms yet there are many symptoms that are common among a majority sufferers. These symptoms include: Feelings of guilt, worthlessness, or helplessness and loss of interest or pleasure in hobbies.
One thing that this page on depression does not explain however, are the potencies of medicine and therapy. Therapy and medicine (usually antidepressants) are both equally effective at treating depression once a medicine or therapy that works best for the patient is found. However, taking medication while also attending therapy works loads better than either one individually (here is a meta-analysis for those who are into the science/statistical side of things). The journey to get to that point, however, is usually not easy. Many people have to try multiple antidepressants before finding a good fit for them. This process is a long one, as each new medicine must be tried for at least 4 weeks and preferably 8 weeks to determine their effectiveness. The long time to see whether they work (or not) has to do with the amount of time that the medicine needs to build up in the blood and the fact that the first week or two have side effects that usually go away. Therefore, you must wait at least 2 weeks to even see if your body can tolerate the drug and if the side effects will dissipate( the Mayo Clinic has a great article on antidepressants). A similarly arduous journey may take place in finding a suitable therapist. Not only do therapists have long wait times (usually at least a few weeks for new patients), but they also may just not sit right with the patient. That is, the person seeking treatment doesn’t feel comfortable with the therapist or the patient realizes that talking with a particular gender of therapist is easier or harder. These weeks or months of trying to find treatment that works for the individual can, and probably will, be difficult for the person suffering from depression as well as their friends and family.
The NIMH page also differentiates between the 5 types of depression. The variety of depressions are another factor that causes each experience with depression to be different. The uniqueness of each person’s battle with this illness makes it more difficult than let’s say, the chicken pox, to educate the public on. But with your help we can spread around some simple educating tidbits to further educate the public! Try sharing any of the pages I linked in this post to your facebook or twitter or other social media site to start some conversations on depression and mental health! I am looking forward to this journey with you, and am excited to be connecting with you all every week!