"I think I am getting depressed!"
Have you expressed the above recently?
What is "depressed"? Is it a mental disorder? Do we need to see doctors?
Recently "depression" is a hot topic. A few difficult years of the pandemic, unstoppable news of friends and family migrating out, stock market and property market going down, increasing stress in work and daily life ... we feel unhappy and exhausted quite often.
We can seek help from psychologists, they will use validated assessments tools to help us understand how sad/depressed we are. Then we have a reason/label to explain why we are upset, followed by regular visits to psychologists for therapies, or get medication from psychiatrists. If we can commit to see psychologists or psychiatrists on schedule, for sure it is useful. But what if we don't have time and budget?
Would it make us even more stressful by carrying the "depressed" reason/label?
The "depressed" reason/label indeed reflects our condition at the moment when we take the assessment. But that is a diagnosis at that time, not the cause. What we should address is the problems that lead to our depressed feelings. At the same time, our depressed feelings hinder and interrupt our thinking and problem-solving capabilities, therefore the feelings linger and the root causes are not addressed.
The mental illness named Depression is always diagnosed with Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (fifth edition) - DSM-V*, by professional mental health practitioners. People diagnosed with Depression not only feel depressed all the time, but also have their daily life functioning significantly impaired. When you say "I am going to be depressed", it is actually a positive signal alerting you that you need to take some action to prevent it from going worse.
So why bother with the reason/label? Wouldn't addressing the issues be more practical? Stay away from Depression. Contact Rebalance for affordable service to handle issues together with you, for details please visit https://www.rebalance.asia.
*Reference:
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders : DSM-5. (5th ed.).
Author:
Yvonne Lee
Chief Well-being Officer, Rebalance Asia
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