Depression

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Depression is a serious illness. Health professionals use the terms 'depression', 'depressive illness' or â€˜ clinical depressionâ€™ to refer to something very different from the common experience of feeling miserable or fed up for a short period of time.

In depression you may have feelings of extreme sadness that can last for a long time. These feelings are severe enough to interfere with your daily life, and can last for weeks or months rather than days.

Depression is common; about 15 percent of people will have a bout of major depression at some point in their lives and it is the fourth most common cause of disability worldwide. The number of people with depression is hard to estimate, because many donâ€™t get help or arenâ€™t formally diagnosed.

Most of the 4,000 suicides committed each year in England are linked to depression. On average, 15% of people with recurrent depression (repeated attacks) have an increased risk of suicide.

Women seem to be twice as likely to suffer from depression than men, although this could be because men are less likely to seek help. Depression can appear at any age and occurs in every Western country. There is some debate about whether it is seen in every culture across the world, although it now seems likely that depression is a universal human condition.

People with a family history of depression are more likely to experience depression themselves. Depression affects people in many different ways and can cause a wide variety of physical, psychological (mental) and social symptoms.

Doctors describe depression in the following three ways:

1. By how serious it is:

mild, in which there is some impact on your daily life
moderate, in which there is significant impact on your daily life
severe, in which activities of daily life are nearly impossible.

2. By physical symptoms: If you have depression have you will probably have one or two (or maybe more) physical 'somatic') symptoms.

3. By psychotic symptoms: If you have depression you may also have psychotic symptoms, such as hallucinations or delusions. These symptoms donâ€™t affect everyone with depression. Please see the separate encyclopaedia topics on specific types of depression such as bi-polar affective disorder, and seasonal affective disorder (SAD) for further information.