Ways of Understanding Depression

The incidences of cases of depression increase year by year, in the west, which may be due to an increased understanding of depression and greater sensitivity to its symptoms and effects. In order to understand depression it is necessary to understand how it is different from natural low moods or incidences of unhappiness. Depression differentiates itself from normal mood changes in three different ways: by its difference in intensity, difference in frequency and its difference in duration.


The intensity of depression is one which takes it beyond what might be considered a ‘normal’ response to an event or situation. Where someone might express sadness or disappointment a depressed person will take the sadness to a deeper level of unhappiness and their disappointment may take existential proportions. A depressed person is already low and so even seemingly small or relatively insignificant events can be like the straw that breaks the camel’s back; which explains the apparent ‘over reaction’. Referring to the difference between the ‘Unipolar’ and ‘Bipolar’ Depression Disorders, one is perpetually in a negative state, while the other fluctuates from negative to positive and hence, overreactions may take different forms according to the ‘pole’ the sufferer is in; a Manic Depressive might react with great pleasure at some seemingly small positive event.


On a day to day basis we are all affected by those good or bad, pleasant and unpleasant occurrences and events in our lives which we tend to react accordingly with pleasure, with sadness and, overall, the balance of our emotions is on an even keel. The depressive will not experience life like this and will tend to ‘hover’ around the ‘pole’ of unhappiness; or be more prone to reacting to negative rather than positive events. Hence, the frequency with which they are sad, unhappy and depressed is greater since they are less likely to gain the perspective of pleasurable moments to balance out the unpleasant and so their tendency will be to appear regularly unhappy, despondent, and disappointed.


The level of our emotion tends to be in accordance with the level of the event which brings it about. As social beings we each have an intuitive grasp of what sort of reaction to expect from a particular event and we will often recongnise when a reaction is greater or less than our expectation even though it is not something we could normally quantify or measure. A depressive, due to their state, will likely appear to ‘overreact’ to negative events and under react to positives. Since their state of depression will tend to place them in the more negative ‘pole’ they are already low and so negative events will merely take them lower. On the contrary, a manic depressive, if in the positive pole of their disorder, might display absolute euphoria over some small positive event