Feeling depressed is a little more than feeling a bit sad. For many people it is a burden that is very difficult to bear. Although you might think that depression will never happen to you, almost 20% of all people will get depressed at one time in their life. Recognizing your own state of depressions is very important and the first step on treating it. In most cases this disease is very well treatable with a combination of cognitive therapy and anti depressive medication. But the problem is that most patients don’t know or understand that they are depressed.
Patients will describe depression as like a big black curtain that surrounds you or a glass bell that is put on top of you and sucks all the energy out. This points exactly the problem why so many patients are not able to recognize it or do something about it because the simply don’t have the energy for it.
Treatment will differ for what type of depression you have. Treatment for severe depression often exists solely of anti depressive medication because the patients are to sick for cognitive therapy to be effective. We should also make a differentiation between primary depression and manic depressive disorder. Manic depressive disorder is also called bipolar disorder or bipolar disease and it is quite different to a normal depression. Where patients who are depressed will feel extremely sad, bipolar patients will have episodes of sadness but also episodes where the feel themselves extremely well, the manic episode.
For a doctor or psychologist it is important to know what type of disorder a patient has because treatment is highly dependable on it. You can not give a bipolar patient the same medication as someone with a primary depression because that will not help. You also want to protect the patient when he has an episode of mania because they have lost touch with reality and might do harm to themselves.
Coping with bipolar disorder is a hard thing to do but with enough effort of the patients treatment is often very effective.
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