Kitabı oxu: «Depressive Moods»

Depressive Moods

Suggestions and advice for your well-being

Immediate aid options and long-term possibilities for better coping with and being able to prevent depressive moods

Introduction

Herein below I would like to introduce you a few possibilities that will help you to better cope with depressive moods and inner tension.

In addition to some pragmatic, quickly feasible immediate aid options, this guide booklet provides you with various possibilities that may contribute to an improvement in the long term. Moreover, you find some basic information about possible causes and appearances that shall help you to get a better understanding of depressive moods.

The following explanations, however, cannot replace either an individual consultation or a therapeutic treatment.

For this reason, I want to point out once again that severe, depressive moods that impair your everyday life and/or are experienced as a burden indicate a depressive disorder (depression). In case of a depressive disorder, unconscious factors usually play an important role and need to be examined and analysed in order to improve your well-being. Therefore it is advisable - even in case of doubt - to make use of therapeutic support following a thorough medical clarification.

Causes of depressive moods

Depressive moods may have different and various causes.

Either they can be a normal reaction to stressful events such as e.g. separation, loss of a beloved person (mourning), job loss or be the consequence of other critical situations or existing stress factors.

Depressive moods may also be due to less dramatic, but detrimental longer-term life circumstances such as e.g. instable and/or disharmonious relationships, an inconvenient home situation or an inappropriate job.

Furthermore, they can depend on the seasons; depressed moods mainly show up in autumn and winter.

Depressive moods to a pathological extent mostly occur in connection with depressive disorders. This, however, must not necessarily be the case as proven by the masked depression with its dominating physical symptoms. Moreover, a depressive mood may be an attendant symptom of various other psychological diseases.

Various physical diseases or the side effects of medicaments may also cause a depressed mood. Vitamin and/or mineral deficiencies or dehydration as well may significantly affect your well-being and result in respectively contribute to a depressive mood.

Signs of depressive moods

Depressive moods may have various mental and/or physical signs and symptoms.

The following symptoms are typical of depressive moods and may occur individually or in combination in varying intensity:

• Depressed mood

• Reduced energy and motivation

• Increased fatigue – hardly able to work under pressure

• Low self-esteem and lack of self-confidence

• Loss of interest and pleasure

• Feeling of worthlessness

• Feeling of guilt

• Fear of the future

• Reduced appetite (increased appetite is also possible)

• Reduced alertness and concentration

• Sleep disturbance such as e.g. difficulty to fall asleep, early waking up

• Somatic symptoms such as e.g. headache, back problems, circulatory, blood pressure and gastrointestinal disorders etc.

• Suicidal thoughts

Since such mental symptoms are often experienced as a particularly embarrassing deficit, they are frequently concealed, reinterpreted or not at all consciously perceived.

As proved by scientific work, depressive moods and disorders are not a matter of intelligence nor are they due to another personality deficit (e.g. unable to pull yourself together). Quite the contrary, they are an expression of inner or outer, conscious or unconscious conflicts, a reaction to burdening events, adverse living circumstances and traumatic experience (if an organic disease as cause of the depressive moods can be excluded).