Depression : Coping with it

Back in india, depression is more mental illness, reflecting weakness of a person, his inability to cope with whatever situation there exists, it is more of something that is as tabooed and bad as some serious illness say like AIDS. Associating depression, or what is correctly termed as clinical depression, with an illness, something that can be diagnosed and cured is hard to grasp.

The fact that a person can be ill with depression is simply hard to understand.

Clinical depression is associated with, as one can easily find by googling it, certain set of symptoms, easy to look for. Usually you are given a questionaire to fill, with answers yes or no, to questions like,

did u have thoughts of suicide recently,
do you think there is no hope for future
do u feel anxious all the time,
have u started to forget things quite often,
have u lost interest in anything that u do,
and the set continues....

The medication available in the western world where it is appropriately treated as illness, basically works on rectifying the chemical imbalance in the brain, something called neurotransmitters, that play role in conveying information from one brain cell to the other.
Class of medicines that fall into category called SSRIs, i.e., Selective Serotonin Reuptake inhibitors, like the more common, ElLilys, Prozac or Zoloft by Pfizer, work by blocking serorotin reuptake mechanism, thereby more serotinin stays in the synaptic cleft, (layman words, the space between 2 connecting cells,). High levels of serotonin over an enduring time period create changes in cell configuration in terms of more channles made available for better communication between the two connecting cells, the amount of serotonin produced, as well as in the number of serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SERT ) expressed. An increase in serotonin creates a change in SERT expression and consequently effects mood and other serotonin affected behaviors. It is these compensatory responses at the cell that improves or enhances mood and is considered to be a form of solution to depression problems.


This is one approch to problem of depression which is purely scientific. However, many a times depression is more than just some chemical imbalance. Upbringing of a child, child who is repeatedly criticized or treated unfairly, not allowed to think or act independently, denied love and attention, compared unfavorably with others, humiliated repeatedly in front of others or made to feel worthless and unwanted, very likely will develop low self esteem while growing up and suffers from feelings of inadequacy. Failure might follow, and if you are unable to meet the expectation that society have from you, depression might result. Basically as might be diagnosed correctly, one might start feeling complete hopelessness and self pity. He might start worrying over trifle matters and might loose sight of where hes going.

In such case, society plays an important role to bring the person back on track, more than anything else. Close friends, relatives , family, all with their share of love and respectful approch towards the persons problems might help him more than anything else, to feel important again.

Finally, sad events like the recent suicide of famous indian model/actress/MTV VJ, which are just spur of the moment things can be prevented by the ill person himself, if the person under such critical depressed condition has a little bit of courage to seek help.