Skip to main content

10 Myths and Facts About Depression



Myth: Depression is a character flaw and is a sign of weakness.
Fact: Depression has nothing to do with strength of one’s character. It happens due to a complex interplay of biological and environmental risk factors and is a treatable condition like any other physical illness. With all the attached stigma, seeking help for depression is a sign of courage and not weakness.

Myth: Depression is just “having the blues.”
Fact: Depression is more just feeling sad or down in the dumps. The sadness is more persistent and pervades your day-to-day life and it, along with other symptoms of depression, makes it harder for you to function at your normal levels.

Myth: You can just “snap out” of depression.
Fact: Telling people with depression to just “snap out of it” never helps as depression, like other physical illnesses, takes time to heal. While treated episodes of depression lasts about three months, untreated depression may last from 6 to 13 months.

Myth: Depression affects only women.
Fact: Although women are 1.5 to 3 times more likely to get depressed compared to men, men are not immune from it. According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), men may experience depression differently than women. While feelings of sadness, worthlessness, and excessive guilt are more common in women, men usually show signs and symptoms of extreme tiredness, irritability, lack of interest in once-pleasurable activities, and difficulty sleeping. In addition, men with depression are more prone for alcohol or drug use. Men may also avoid talking about their depression with relatives or friends and may turn to work as an escape, but ultimately becoming more frustrated, discouraged, and angry. Although suicide attempts are more common in women, more men than women actually die due to this reason in the United States.

Myth: Depression only affects adults.
Fact:  Depression does affect children and teenagers. The National Comorbidity Study found that 11.7% of the 10,123 surveyed adolescents aged 13-18 met diagnosis of either major depression or dysthymia, a form of chronic low grade depression. Of note, the rate of depressive disorders doubled in the 17-18 year age group compared to 13-14 age group. In contrast to adults, children and adolescents, when depressed, may experience irritability rather than sadness. While not all teenagers who are moody should be investigated for depression, but if the mood symptoms are persistent and exist with other symptoms suggestive of depression, then it may prudent to rule out depression.

Myth: If you have depression in your family, you will also develop depression.
Fact:  Depression, like diabetes and high blood pressure, is a heritable illness. However, genes alone account for about 37% of causality in depression and the rest is non-genetic, including environmental and physical factors.

Myth:  Depression is only for losers or those who feel sorry for themselves.
Fact: Depression is an equal opportunity illness and cuts across nationalities, education level, social status, occupation, race, and culture. Celebrities, politicians, scientists, artists, and other professionals who have been successful in their respective fields have dealt with depression.  

Myth: Depression is a life-long illness.
Fact: Most individuals with depression do eventually improve. Recovery begins within three months for about 40% of people with depression and within one year for about 80%. In one study, only 17% of people with depression had symptoms of depression when followed up at 39 months. While majority improve, some also tend to get recurrent episodes of depression.   

Myth: Depression can be diagnosed by a medical test.
Fact: Unfortunately, there is no medical test to diagnose depression like there are for diabetes or other medical conditions. Whereas you can try to self-diagnose depression using some internet-based rating scales, a formal diagnosis should best be left to a professional. This is important because a professional can rule out other psychological or medical conditions that can mimic depression.

Myth: Depression only responds to medications.
Fact:  Over the last few decades, the trend in print media has been to present depression as a bio-medical disorder rather than an entity caused by a variety of reasons. This in turn has perpetuated a belief that the antidepressants may be the only effective way of treating depression. While antidepressants alone may be more effective in more severe forms of depression, both cognitive-behavioral therapy and interpersonal psychotherapy are effective by themselves in mild or moderate depression. In addition, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy helps prevent future episodes of depression in people with multiple depressive episodes. A caveat when choosing therapy as a treatment modality for depression is to seek an expert trained in depression-focused therapy as there a lot of other therapies that are not helpful for depression.

To learn more about evidence-based self-management techniques that are proven to work for depression, check out Dr. Duggal's Author Page.

HARPREET S. DUGGAL, MD, FAPA



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

10 Poor Listening Styles to Avoid

When we talk about communication, we mostly focus on speaking, writing, and reading. Listening is seldom emphasized as a primary form of communication, even though listening enables us to satisfy an individual’s deep psychological needs – to be understood, to be affirmed, to be validated, and to be appreciated (Covey, 2020). We mostly listen not to understand but to prepare response, judge, or interpret information through our own motives and frame of reference. These poor listening styles can be subsumed under these 10 categories (Covey 2014, Harvard Business Review Press, 2019): 1. Spacing out or ignoring is when you zone out because you are too preoccupied with your own thoughts. This does happen to all of us, but you don’t want to be labelled as a spacey person if this keeps happening to you.  2. Pretend or removed listening is where you may be multitasking and give the speaker the impression that you are paying attention using fillers like “yeah,” uh-huh,” “right,” “cool” or...
Post a Comment
Read more

The 6 Facets of Impostor Syndrome and its Relation to Depression

A lot has been written recently about impostor syndrome, also called impostor phenomenon in scientific literature. Most pop psychology descriptions of this condition, which impairs professional performance and leads to burnout, skew towards making this a syndrome of perceived fraudulence or fear of being seen as fake. However, the fact is that people with impostor syndrome describe a myriad of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and none of the existing scales capture all the facets of this complex and multifaceted syndrome (Mark et al., 2019). Also, contrary to popular belief, impostor syndrome is not limited to highly successful individuals and depends more on how people respond to specific achievement tasks when there is an element of being appraised.  The six facets that define this phenomenon are discussed below: (Bravata et al., 2019; Clance & Imes, 1978; Walker & Saklofske, 2023). 1. Fake: This attribute is the closest to the original conceptualization of imposto...
Post a Comment
Read more

Value-Based Goals: The Antidote for “Success Depression”

A disconnect between your present accomplishments and your core values may make you suffer from success depression  wherein despite “having it all” (e.g., successful career, stable relationships, healthy children, etc.), you still struggle with depression and view your accomplishments as hollow (Zettle, 2007). The cure for this malaise is to clarify your core values and have goals and actions that are driven by these values. Psychotherapist Russ Harris describes values as our heart’s deepest desires for the way we want to interact with the world, other people, and ourselves. They are what we want to stand for in life, how we want to behave, what sort of person we want to be, and what sort of strengths and qualities we want to develop (Harris, 2009). Values are subjective; what one may consider as a value (e.g., being famous) may be considered as being cocky by another person. Moreover, values do change with time. For instance, you may value social popularity and raising a fa...
Post a Comment
Read more