Everyone experiences mood changes as a part of living life. Good things happen. Bad things happen. But depression involves a cluster of symptoms of which sadness is only one. Pouring rain is not a flash flood, but it is part of the combination of factors that produce a flash flood. Depression is usually defined as a constellation of any five of the following symptoms that persist for 2 weeks:

1. Sad mood most of the day, nearly every day
2. Noticeable loss of interest or pleasure in nearly all activities most of every day
3. Significant change in weight not due to dieting (weight gain or loss of more than 5% of body weight in a month)
4. Sleep problems nearly every day (excessive sleeping or insomnia)
5. Agitation (irritable attitude and physical tension) or marked slowing of one’s thoughts and actions (e.g., much more difficulty getting started on something than usual)
6. Fatigue or loss of energy every day
7. Feelings of worthlessness or excessive (or inappropriate) guilt nearly every day
8. Diminished ability to think or concentrate or indecisiveness, nearly every day
9. Recurrent thoughts of death (not just fear of dying), recurring thoughts about suicide, or a suicidal gesture (deliberate carelessness in dangerous situations) or an attempt, or specific plans.

Most people have experienced one or more of the above symptoms at some time in their lives. But when five or more of them combine and take hold, they can cause agonizing distress and can disrupt one’s ability to function well at work, at school, or socially. When this happens the depression is considered “clinical” because it is tenacious enough to need some type of treatment. If a person is having thoughts about death that keep returning, this is almost certainly an indicator of clinical depression, whether or not the person can recognize any other symptoms.

As you can see, a person may or may not feel sadness as their main symptom. The cluster of symptoms, and not any one of them, is what makes a person begin to see the impact on his or her life. When we have normal, everyday sadness or the blues, our brain bounces back. With clinical depression, our brain starts working in a different way and gets stuck there.

The chronic stress caused by ongoing symptoms of anxiety attacks bring about an exhaustion of the brain's resources to the point that the brain loses it flexibility to bounce back from a sad mood.  At this point, chronic stress causes a major depressive episode.

But it also moves the opposite direction. A person stuck in the labor camp of depression feels vulnerable to many irritations and stressors that might otherwise be taken in stride. This creates an emotional climate for the symptoms of anxiety attacks as a person's thoughts move toward a series of "What if..." suppositions in a desperate attempt to be ready for any and every possible negative scenario. In this case, what causes panic attacks is the extra vulnerability that a depressed person feels.

 Myths About Clinical Depression

Myth #1: IF A PERSON ISN’T CRYING ALL THE TIME, THEN THEY COULD NOT BE CLINICALLY DEPRESSED. Clinical depression is a group of several symptoms; sadness and frequent crying are only two. Furthermore, some people are depressed to the point of being beyond tears.

 Myth #2: PEOPLE WHO ARE DEPRESSED SHOULD JUST SNAP OUT OF IT. If it is a clinical depression, the brain’s orchestra is out of tune and stuck there. One of the telltale signs of clinical depression is that a person does everything they normally do to get out of the blues and nothing seems to work. The feeling of being stuck simply adds to the depression.

 Myth #3: ONLY WEAK PEOPLE GET DEPRESSED. This is quite a ridiculous myth once you think about it. It’s like saying, “Only weak people get thirsty for water.” Depression is usually the natural result of the body or soul lacking something important such as rest, inner peace, adjustment to circumstances, serotonin, good relationships, or hope for the future. If a person in the desert dying of thirst insists that he is not thirsty we pity him; we don’t consider him stronger for his denial. If he acknowledges his thirst it becomes evidence that he is still alive, and that he has courage to acknowledge his need. In a similar way, being depressed is often proof that you have a pulse: your brain is registering the fact that something important is missing from your life.

 Web Searches as Metaphors for Depressed Thinking

Rapid-fire negative thoughts increase the vulnerability experienced by clinically depressed individuals.  People often acquire negative attitudes that cause situations to look to them like half-empty pitchers. Depression distorts our thinking in the direction of the negative. It seems that the thoughts in our brain are all linked together by various networks of association, like a world-wide web in the mind. When we are depressed, the negative network of thoughts is activated. Our conscious mind is drawn to the web sites of negativity.As we move through our day, our brain uses our negative mood as a search engine to locate all “half-empty” websites (negative thoughts we dwell on). The search results are used to make sense out of whatever situation we are facing. Depression makes the search engine come up with negative thoughts at the top—with compelling advertisements. One negative thought leads to another until there are 13,473 results! Realistic positive thoughts are buried somewhere in the mass of search results, but they are not easily seen. Cynical conclusions about events and people flow freely through this negative network of association. The result is an overall distortion of perspective intensifying what causes panic attacks: the self-perception of vulnerability that grows under the surface of conscious awareness until in erupts in the symptoms of anxiety attacks.

 

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