Energy Healing, Celebrities and Depression by Jerry Sargeant

It is not news that depression has become a kind of invisible epidemic, afflicting approximately 121 million people worldwide. The World Health Organisation ranks depression as one of the worlds most disabling diseases, and our best estimates from population studies show that approximately twenty percent of people will experience a serious, clinical depression during the course of their lifetime.

While depression receives a lot of publicity, its causes remain mysterious, and those who suffer from it tend to hide their condition. Although the medical community now approaches depression as a disease, many depressed people still feel a sense of shame and judge themselves as weak or self-indulgent for not being able to will themselves out of their sadness. When youre in the throes of depression, it’s hard to escape the feeling that you are a failure and that the future is hopeless.

What Depression Isn’t

The word depression has become commonplace in our everyday conversations, with people using it to describe everything from a passing funk to deep disappointment. You might hear someone say, I feel depressed about our football team losing, or I’m so depressed about not getting to see my daughter over the holidays.

In fact, becoming sad or blue isn’t a sure sign of depression. Life brings difficulties that we respond to with a wide range of normal emotions: sadness, anxiety, resignation, confusion, grief, and frustration. Moods are cyclical, and if these feelings are your response to a tough event, they will subside on their own in time. If they linger, however, and there seems to be no definite cause or trigger, such as losing your job or the death of a loved one, depression is accepted as the conventional diagnosis.

Diagnosing Depression

Depression isn’t one single disorder; there are actually several types of depression. For a diagnosis of major depressive disorder, a person must experience at least five of the following symptoms during the same two-week period:

• Depressed mood (feeling sad or empty; being tearful)
• Markedly diminished interest or pleasure in all, or almost all, activities
• Significant weight loss when not dieting or weight gain; or decrease or increase in appetite
• Insomnia or hypersomnia (sleeping too little or too much)
• Slowing of thoughts and physical movements
• Fatigue or loss of energy
• Feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt
• Diminished ability to think or concentrate; or indecisiveness
• Recurrent thoughts of death (not just fear of dying), recurrent suicidal ideation without a specific plan, or a suicide attempt or specific plan for committing suicide

If you can count five or more of these as being present, know that your list must contain depressed mood or diminished interest or pleasure before you would be considered medically depressed. The DSM-IV, a manual doctors use to diagnose mental disorders, also recognizes other types of depression:

• Dysthymia is mild, chronic depression. It must present for at least two years for a diagnosis of dysthymia.
• Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a form of depression that generally arises as the days grow shorter in the autumn and winter.
• Postpartum depression begins after a woman has given birth and may get worse as time goes on.|
• Atypical depression is characterized by moods that worsen or improve in direct response to events. It is also characterized by overeating, oversleeping, and fatigue.
• Bipolar disorder (sometimes referred to as manic depression) is a complex disorder in which one cycles between periods of major depression and extreme elation or mania.

Possible Determining Factors

The factors that make it more likely you will become depressed form a long list: genetic predisposition, being female, death or loss of loved one, major life events (even happy ones, like a graduation), other mental illnesses, substance abuse, childhood trauma, certain medications, serious illness, and personal problems such as financial troubles or the loss of a job. What all of these things have in common is that they disrupt the normal balancing mechanisms of mind and body.

Even though no one knows exactly what causes depression, it is clearly a state of internal imbalance. Balance is essential for the healthy functioning of both your body and your mind, so a treatment that aims to restore balance to your mind-body physiology can help you return to a natural state of well-being.

Beginning the Healing Journey