Depression – Causes of Depression, Symptoms, and Treatment

What is Depression?

• Depression can be classified as a mood disorder that leads to the feelings of sadness, loss of interest, reduced energy, diminished activity, anxiety or anger over a prolonged period of time. It adversely affects how a person behaves in his everyday life and in the worst case may even lead to suicide. Close to 800,000 people die due to suicide every year.
• Depression is also one of the primary causes of disability and is also a major contributor to global diseases.
• Depression is characterized by sadness, loss of interest, low self esteem, feelings of guilt, disturbed sleep, loss of appetite, tiredness, lack of concentration, etc

Common Causes

Causes of Depression – Depression arises out of social, emotional, and biological interactions of an individual with his/her environment. Adverse situations in life like childhood adversity, loss of a job, loss of a close one, psychological trauma, etc are likely to evolve into depression. There are interrelationships between depression and physical health. For example, cardiovascular complications can lead to depression and vice versa. Depression can lead to even more serious depression and worsen a person’s life.

Relevant statistics

• More than 300 million people are estimated to be suffering from depression which constitutes roughly 4.4% of the world’s population. Nearly half of these people live in the South-East Asia region and western pacific region.
• Depression is more common amongst females (5.1%) rather than males (3.6%)
• Cases of depression increased by 18.4% between 2005 and 2015.

Natural Ayurvedic Remedies 

• Ayurvedic formulation – Saraswatarishta
• Ayurvedic formulation – Kushmanda lehyam
• Ayurvedic formulation –  Brahmi Ghrita
• Ayurvedic formulation –  Kalyana Ghrita
• Ayurvedic formulation –  Chandanasava
• Intake of a pure, uncontaminated, fresh vegetarian diet that are easily digested by the body – It helps one eliminate the tamasic (mode of ignorance) and rajasic (mode of passion) influences within oneself. It also helps proceed towards sattva (mode of goodness). This is the essence of treating depression.
• Practicing meditation every day, at least for 20 minutes.
• Sleeping early (preferably before 10 pm) and waking up early.
• Exercising daily
• Spirituality and meditation can help in dealing with depression. This article provides detailed insights on this topic and can really help one suffering from it.