Symptoms
Each depression is unique and depressive symptoms vary in type and intensity for each person.
Each depression is unique but if you’re experiencing several of the symptoms listed below for more than 2 weeks, or if they’re disrupting your daily life, it’s essential to seek support from a healthcare professional, such as your doctor. This is especially crucial if you’re having thoughts of harming yourself or suicide. Remember, depressive symptoms rarely improve on their own and may worse if left untreated.
Mental Symptoms
- – Persistent feeling of sadness or low mood, often for now apparent reason
- – Sense if hopelessness or emptiness
- – Feeling emotionally numb, unable to experience emotions
- – Extreme sensitivity to rejection or failure
- – Low self-esteem, feelings of worthlessness
- – Fixation on past failures, increased self-criticism, and guilt
- – Difficulty with thinking, slowed thought processes and trouble concentrating
- – Regular thoughts of death or dying
- – Frustration or pervasive sense of anger
- – Feeling constantly irritable, grumpy, or easily annoyed
Behavioral Symptoms
- – Loss of energy, fatigue, or exhaustion, but also agitation and restlessness (such as pacing, inability to sit still or relax)
- – Uncharacteristic angry outburst and rebellious behavior
- – Poor school performance or absence from school
- – Loss of interest in usual activities or hobbies
- – Withdrawal from social interactions, spending less or no time with friends or family
- – Slowed body movements
- – Neglect of personal appearance and hygiene
- – Changes in sleep patterns, either sleeping too much or too little
- – Changes in appetite or weight gain
- – Engaging in self-harm or expressing suicidal thoughts
- – Increased use of alcohol or drugs
Physical Symptoms
Frequent complaints of unexplained body aches, headaches, fatigue, cramps, back pain, which persist without a clear physical cause
Some people may also develop anxiety alongside depression, either before or during a depressive episode. Therefore, it’s possible for someone to be dealing with additional symptoms and may require treatment for more than one mental disorder.