From a scientific point of view, there are a huge number of psychological disorders in the world and the most common of them is depressive disorder. The Global Health Data Exchange estimates that 251-310 million people worldwide suffer from depression. depression is common, but it is fortunately treatable.
The generally accepted term sounds like this: Depression is a mental disorder, the main signs of which are reduced — depressed, sad, anxious, fearful or indifferent — mood and loss of the ability to have fun.
According to Freud, depression is a battle of opposing attitudes to something driven inside, when aggression is directed at oneself. This definition explains all the symptoms of depression: inability to enjoy anything, increased stress hormones, unwillingness to get out of bed, psychomotor retardation, suicidal thoughts. Inside a person, the most difficult conflict of all possible occurs — a conflict with oneself.
Psychoanalysis provides its own explanation of the causes and dynamics of depression. Sigmund Freud, in his work "Sorrow and Melancholy", showed that both sadness and depression are a complex of feelings that arises as a result of the loss of either a significant person or some vital psychological state, such as love, security, well-being, some ideals, hopes and self-image.
Yet there is a significant difference between grief and depression. In the usual reactions of grief, a person experiencing loss feels that the external world has "decreased", while in depressive states, "lost or destroyed" is a part of himself. This case may also occur when the client knows the loss that caused melancholy, since he knows who he lost, but does not know what he lost in it.
Grief passes over time: we live through sadness, accept loss, learn to live without it, finding a new object for affection, love, or restoring an idea of ourselves, our ideals and hopes. With depression, this does not happen. Freud explained this by saying that a person experiences strong negative feelings about what he has lost, and since the object is no longer there, he directs them to himself. This leads to a state of deep depression.
Freud suggested that depressed people experienced an encounter with early loss. At the same time, such an early loss is not always obvious, for example, the death of a parent. Loss can occur only in the inner world of the child, for example, if for one reason or another he refuses to depend on his parents before the moment when he is really emotionally ready to do it. As a result, he may come to believe that something is wrong with him, he is not good and this has led to the loss of his beloved object. Therefore, people with depressive psychology deep down believe that they are bad. They experience anxiety, shame, and beliefs that something is wrong with them. This belief can be conscious or be in the unconscious.
Depression can also be hidden behind a lot of somatic problems. These can be various complaints about your health, insomnia. It is known that up to 20% of people who go to doctors with somatic complaints suffer from depression. Emotional problems seem to hide behind bodily symptoms, expressed through their manifestation.
Alcohol or drug addiction is also very often based on depression. It seems that the use of drugs and alcohol alleviate the condition, but in fact increases depression. It turns out a vicious circle.
Often the cause of depression can be a reaction to an external event, loss. It can be the death of a loved one, illness, divorce, job loss, serious conflict with significant people. Sometimes this loss is outwardly invisible. A person feels it inside himself.
Depression can also be experienced by people experiencing life changes. They can be very joyful, for example, moving to a new apartment, having a child, getting married, a new social status, and much more, but these seemingly positive changes can be perceived as a personal loss and be the cause of depression. It happens that a person has been striving for something for a long time and finally reached the goal, But instead of joy comes apathy and loss of interest in life. There have been many cases when symptoms of depression first appeared on the background of great success, personal and professional. With more careful awareness, success and achievements are often associated with feelings of guilt and anxiety. The unconscious meanings of certain external events have a much greater impact on our lives than we used to think.
And it happens that outwardly everything is fine, without any changes, and depression develops. There are deep internal causes of depression. And they are individual for each person. They are laid in childhood and depend on family relationships and personality traits. In the process of early development, a person may develop a critical attitude towards himself, a sense of guilt and shame, perfectionism, the need to live for the sake of others, a conviction of injustice and resentment against other people may arise, a sense of hopelessness to change anything.
There is also a theory suggesting that depression sometimes occurs as a reaction to chronic stress, which may be based on both physiological and psychosocial factors. In such cases, the main traumatic factor, as a rule, is not identified or is described as a long streak of minor failures and disappointments.
But probably the main idea of all of the above is that nothing disappears without a trace and nothing is taken from nowhere. That is, depression does not come from nowhere, and this is influenced by many factors that have already been mentioned before.
There is also a romanticization of depression. Romanticization is the idealization of something, praise, presentation in the best light. Many mental disorders romanticize and depression is no exception, unfortunately. But mental disorders are something that cannot be romanticized, because there is nothing good about them. This is what prevents a person from living and fully enjoying life. In no case should the treatment of disorders be postponed and it is necessary to seek help from specialists as soon as possible