Hi, guys. Welcome to today’s session on “10 Signs and Symptoms of Depression”. My name is Gilles Brideau. I’m a psychotherapist, counselor, hypnotist, and coach that lives and works in Sudbury, in Northern Ontario, Canada.
One of the reasons I wanted to do this video today is to really talk about, not only the signs and symptoms of depression, but also the stigma that’s associated to depression, and ways for you to overcome it.
The first sign that I see with patients exhibiting symptoms of depression are this real feeling of hopelessness or pessimism. It seems like everything seems to be a chore. Now, it’s normal for people to have the blues and to feel a little off. This is a persistent feeling of pessimism and negativity that continues to persist for more than two weeks. Clients often describe it like a dark cloud that continually follows them. I had a client just yesterday talk about, “It’s like she sees the world through a clouded veil.” There always seems to be distance between her and the world around her. Obviously when you feel that way there’s a lot of feelings of guilt, like, “I should be more. I should do more. What’s wrong with me? I must be flawed and defective. My family won’t want to be with me. My partner won’t want to be with me.” It’s this persistent nagging critical voice inside a person’s mind that keeps making them feel like they are not worthy.
The next sign is a loss of interest or pleasure in things that you once enjoyed. For some people that I’ve worked with, if they were really into sports, hockey, football, soccer, whatever it may be. It doesn’t seem to have the same pull. Even sexual intercourse. Some of my clients, obviously, really enjoyed that at one point. It’s just like, “Whatever. I don’t have the energy. I just don’t really care for it.” There’s a real cycle, a viscous cycle, that continues to spin where the person just doesn’t really want to feel like they’re motivated to do anything.
Again, we talked about it’s normal to feel off on some days where you’re just not yourself. This is very persistent and consistent over time. It’s this feeling of emptiness like it’s you versus the world. It’s like you’re disconnected. Some people have compared it to being in the fog. It’s just not feeling like you are a part of something. Obviously, we talked about the lack of motivation. Clients often talk about this deep sense of fatigue, where, “I’m just tired all the time. I don’t have energy.” It’s like there’s this drain put on them from the time they wake up to the time that they go to bed. They have great difficulty in having a follow through, like even going for a daily walk or something. This dragging your butt feeling.
The next symptom is a real difficulty in concentrating. Even simple tasks become overwhelming. Sometimes it’s even recall, forgetting some important things, or just the inability to make decisions. It’s like you’re forever in this state of limbo where you can’t seem to move forward. It’s like you’re stuck in this state where you just feel low. When we talked about decreased energy and fatigue, often what comes with that are either bouts of insomnia. Which is interesting because you would think as an outsider, if you haven’t experienced this before, that, “Well how would they have insomnia if they’re always tired.” It kind of fits hand in hand.
A lot of times when my clients will report just being exhausted. When they go to bed, the thoughts don’t stop. These automatic negative thoughts, or ANTs, fill their mind. We call it problem surfing, it’s like channel surfing, but problem surfing. You think about one problem and you feel like maybe, “Okay, I’m just going to forget about that,” and another problem pops up, and another problem pops up, and another problem pops up. It always seems like right when you really want to sleep all these issues come to the surface. Some of my clients it’s the opposite end. They’re in bed by 7:00. They wake up about 7:00 exhausted. They just want to sleep all the time. It’s in the sense that the hope is that maybe by sleeping things will get better. Often times they feel like it rarely does.
The next thing is around appetite. For some of my clients, they go into a pattern of overeating. Especially if anxiety comes into play. When a person overeats it actually pushes on the diaphragm and gives a relaxation response, or a calming response. Sometimes my clients have a tendency to overeat. Some because of the level of stress and the feeling of anxiety is they just stop eating altogether. I know, even for myself when I was going through a tough time in my life, food was the last thing I wanted to do. I remember in one month I lost quite a bit of weight. Not necessarily in a healthy way. I really wasn’t hungry at all. It’s like food was not appealing at all. I didn’t get any sense of enjoyment or pleasure out of it. I just didn’t want to participate. You can really have the extremes. I think what you notice in this list too, is every person is really different.
The next one is this feeling of restlessness or irritability. Sometimes it swings from being really low to having energy, or irritability, like, “Okay, I’m fed up of feeling this way.” People become short with their family members or loved ones. They’re just frustrated with feeling the same way. They wish that they could change their state, but often have a sense of powerlessness that they can’t on their own.
Lastly, is obviously the most dangerous one, which is thoughts of suicide or actual attempts. I take all these kinds of thoughts and risks seriously. For some of my clients this is going and get more specific help, more intensive care, than what I can offer as an outpatient counselor. Outpatient meaning that they would see me maybe once every week, or once every two weeks. Sometimes people need much more care than that. Sometimes there is a need for greater assistance. When it gets to this, it’s obvious that asking for help is of key importance and value.
Now, that I know the signs and symptoms, now what? What should I do next? Probably, your first step is finding out what treatment options there is. Know that there’s quite a bit of them. For some it’s to go see a family physician, and to talk about what’s going on. A lot of times if a person sees a physician they may get and receive medication. There’s some medication that actually my clients have said to me that they’ve been really, really helpful. The type of medication, I can’t really recommend one because that’s outside of my scope of practice. Sometimes they would say one medication really worked for one person, then I’d hear the opposite for somebody else.
The physician will help a person and monitor their symptomatology over time to where they can get the best help. On the medication front too, the other thing that’s important is it usually takes, for adults, between six to nine weeks, eight, nine, weeks before the medication, like an antidepressant, really starts to have effect. What I’ve noticed, especially with my young clients, is they get impatient saying, “Well, I tried it for three weeks and it really wasn’t working.” A lot of times you’ve got to give it a chance to balance itself out.
The second way is, obviously, counseling or help. There’s different ways you can look at that. You can go to an outpatient counselor, like myself. Also, we’ve talked about this in a previous video, is through your Employee’s Assistance Program, or extended benefits. Sometimes there’s free services. I know in our local city there’s an outpatient services, especially for mood and anxiety disorders, where you can work within a group to help you overcome difficulties and issues. There’s also some self-help groups and online platforms. I guess the biggest thing, and the biggest take away, from this that I’m hoping that you’re going to get is, if you’re struggling with this, know that you’re not alone. There’s a lot of help out there. The second thing is understanding your depression and its impact on you. For a lot of my clients we just talk about, how is this impacting your life? What is it taking away? What would you like to change? It’s just having an in depth discussion about where they stand with regards to the depression, and seeing if they want to make some changes or not.
Lastly, it’s to recognize that some behavioral changes could improve your state of mind. A lot of people talk about dieting and exercise being an important part of wellness. I would really encourage that as well. We also mentioned that, in some of the signs and symptoms, sometimes it’s difficult to get out of bed. That’s where your systems of support really come into play. If you have somebody that can hold you accountable and take you out for a walk. Sometimes just doing that, just changing your physiology, will make a pretty big impact on your mental health. I usually suggest to people that the walking that I suggest. I suggest all my clients to walk about twenty minutes a day. It’s not just about the movement for weight loss and stuff. It’s actually movement for mental health. The more you move the less you’re in your head. The less you’re in your head, the less you have the ability for those ANTs, automatic negative thoughts, to take over. Especially, more beneficial if you can do that with a friend. Then you could talk out your stuff and have, hopefully, a different perspective.
That’s it. Just some quick signs and symptoms. I guess, again, the most important thing in reducing stigma is to … Don’t hesitate to reach out for help. Whether that be from somebody in your immediate circle of care, or that you seek the help of professionals. Again, if this has persisted for some time, and there’s more intrusive thoughts, like suicidal thoughts. Really, I urge you to seek out some professional help. Look in your city and know what the resources are for you. Thanks so much for coming today. As usual, if you have any comments, thoughts, questions, please don’t hesitate to ask. I will try to respond within a day. With that, thanks so much for joining me today. Have a wonderful day.