Depression (Low mood) Self Help Guide
What is depression?
Depression is a common illness. About 1 in 4 people will be affeted by depression at some point in their life.
Many people use the word ‘depression’ to describe feelings of sadness or unhappiness. These feelings often pass within a few hours or days and during this time, people may be able to carry on much as usual.
Depression is different from this, you feel sad more deeply and for much longer. It is common to lose interest in the things that you used to enjoy and even carrying out our daily day-to-day activities can become very difficult. At its worst, depression can leave someone feeling hopeless about their future and at times may make you feel as though life is not worth living.
Most people believe that depression is caused by a change in the level of certain chemicals in the brain. This can be set off by stressful events such as a relationship or job issues, ill-health, childbirth, death of a loved one, loneliness, changes due to the time of year, over-working or use of drugs and alcohol. However, for some people there does not appear to be an obvious trigger.
The good news is that there are treatments for depression that can really help. The following exercise may be useful in helping you to identify how depression has affected you:
- Before becoming depressed my routine activities were …
- Fun things were …
- Things that I used to look forward to were …
- Things I really wanted to do or dreamt of in the future were …
How many of these things do you still do now? It’s likely that you may have stopped doing some of these things after you became depressed.
