Are you or someone you love struggling with depression? Do you suspect that someone in your life may be? This valuable article from PsychCentral.com describes some of the things that trigger depression, and reading it may help you identify oncoming depression in yourself or others. Please read this excerpt, and if you’re in the Cleveland area and are ready to reach out for help with depression, please give us a call.
Depression is a debilitating, devastating illness. In Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, author William Styron perfectly captures the pain of depression:
“The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come — not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute. If there is mild relief, one knows that it is only temporary; more pain will follow. It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul. So the decision-making of daily life involves not, as in normal affairs, shifting from one annoying situation to another less annoying — or from discomfort to relative comfort, or from boredom to activity — but moving from pain to pain. One does not abandon, even briefly, one’s bed of nails, but is attached to it wherever one goes.”
Depression is caused by a combination of nature and nurture, according to Deborah Serani, PsyD, a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating people with mood disorders. “[N]eurobiology sets the stage for some to have depressive symptoms.”
Nurture is how you grow up, she said. This may include “the experiences that shape you, and moments along the way that can either help protect you from your genetic leanings or worsen them.”