Anxiety, reduced energy and fatigue, significant apathy to and diminished interests in activities, feelings of guilt, worthlessness and hopelessness, irritability, restlessness, and mood swing, including marked changes in appetite, sleep pattern and poor self-concept, all of these symptoms were clearly exhibited by Olaide; and they remain, by clinical standard, the criteria for diagnosing severe depression in individuals.
More serious risk factors may include the entertainment of taking one’s life (suicide ideation) and false sensory perception (Did somebody actually believe that Olaide saw the word “depression” every single day in the course of her traumatic depressive episode?), which are more indicative of severe illness.
Now, I want to make sure that we do not conflate clinical (major) depression with momentary sadness, loneliness, or blues that we all feel from time to time. That is normal sadness which is not qualified for comparison with major depression, that in its own rights, is gradual- persisting for weeks or months at a time.
The story of Olaide demonstrated the truest reality that’s experienced by severely depressive persons. When you have a bout of depression, like we saw in her, you do not have any modicum of motivation to do anything, not even things you usually love(d) to do. All you might want to do is cry and sleep, and hope to never get up again. You’d feel that you’re unlovable, worthless and a liability to others. Alongside a nagging feeling of being boxed in, inside of a deep, dark hole, with no way out, you not only feel that you are losing your mind and self, but the thought of taking your own life would be the scantest, sweetest musing ever!
The cause of clinical depression, like other instances of mental illness, is not known. We don’t just know. The American Psychiatric Association may continue to come up with the diagnostic statistical manual of mental disorders- one after one, edition after edition, the group, hitherto, remains unable to determine the precise cause of mental disorders, including depression in individuals.
However, here’s what we know, depression, like a bunch of other mental illness, “results from a complex interaction of social, psychological, and biological factors”, reports the World Health Organization (WHO). What exactly does that mean?
While I had no explicit idea about what actually happened in Olaide’s family that precipitated her 4-month-aged depressive episode, I knew that her depression was not an individual problem, but one that would have originated with and perpetuated by her family dynamics. Shaky family history, or out-of-order family configuration, including unhealthy family functioning, and family’s degree of emotional connectedness, as well as a collective sense of cohabitation among her family members, all have extreme nexus with our mental health or state, over time.
If you look at a person with severe depression or a particular mental illness and you look at the context of their family, including its “history” and current dynamic, you’d most certainly find a connection, and importantly, you might have a clue as to what’s necessary to be done about it- regarding its solution or the mitigation against its possible future occurrence.
Genes and biology also influence behaviours, as I inferred from the submission of WHO in its definition of the possible causes of depression. Some families’ biological structure is such that severe depression is their “culture”. Episodes of major depression are a constant phenomenon that runs in the families, which becomes even more complicated. ‘Cause we ask, “How’s this stopped? How does this one fit together in order that we might look to resolve the underlying clinical problem? We won’t have a clue!
Finally, we also may have to look at the influence of relationships on our mental ambience- relationships with families, friends, loved ones, colleagues, acquaintances and with the larger society, as the dynamics of these relationships can maintain or aggravate symptomology, as well as assist in reducing depression via various coping mechanisms which I’m excited to have talked about to you about on this very page.
http://inclusivenews.com.ng/2017/12/04/dealing-with-depression-with-resiliency-mental-toughness-and-smart-relationships/