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Seven symptoms of depression
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Published: December 18, 2008
Last week's article focused on the effect of depression on a marriage relationship. Today, we will cover the symptoms of depression and how they play out in a marriage.
There are seven classic symptoms of depression, but a person only needs to exhibit four of the seven to be diagnosed with the disorder.
Eating too much or eating too little is the first symptom. This change in appetite can lead to weight gain or weight loss. Either of these can cause concern and potential conflict between spouses.
A second symptom is sleeping too much or sleeping too little. Changes in sleeping patterns can raise the anxiety of a marriage partner because they usually sleep in the same bed and disturb the other's sleeping.
Depression manifests itself in a third symptom by a nosedive into low self-esteem and feelings of worthlessness. When a marriage partner has no esteem, they tend to wallow in self-pity, which irritates the other partner.
Symptom number four is a drop in energy level. Depressed persons are usually too tired to do anything fun, including sex. Since having fun together is a major factor in a healthy marriage, this change can generate resentment and conflict.
Depressed partners are prone to accidents and poor judgment because of the fifth symptom, which is poor concentration and inability to sustain focus. It is like the brain sometimes malfunctions, due to the depressed mood.
Irritability and restlessness surface as the sixth factor in depression. A pleasant spouse will become animated and snappy at the least provocation. This symptom can also show up in the opposite behavior, which would be non-functionality. Tasks the mate did on regular bases are now ignored by the depressed one, making the other partner's share of the domestic tasks overwhelming. This can birth additional resentment and a sense of unfairness in a spouse.
The seventh symptom is the most serious and most dangerous one. Suicide ideation (sometimes suicide attempts) is not uncommon in severely depressed persons. The pain of being depressed and feeling that you are in a dark gloomy hole and there is no way out generates desperation and thoughts of death as the only way out to stop the pain.
You can begin to see how these symptoms could change a mutually satisfying marriage into a battlefield, especially if the partners don't know they are dealing with a medical problem in one spouse. Hopelessness is like a dark cloud that settles over the marriage affected by depression. The depressed person presents as numb and emotionless (Unless they have the restlessness and irritability form of depression.) Depressed persons sometimes act like a zombie, with no emotion available except sadness.
No two people are depressed the same since symptoms can manifest in more than one form. A professional diagnosis is needed to assess the severity of the disorder and to plan a treatment process. Non-depressed spouses can be a catalyst in getting the depressed spouse to go for help, because depressed people don't believe anything can help. This is far from the truth.
Depression is the most treatable disorder there is. Most people who get the proper treatment recover emotionally within six to eight weeks, sometimes even faster. With good treatment the pain can disappear and a person can enjoy life again.
(Next week's article will focus on treatment and recovery procedures).
Dr. Bill Mitcham is the Director/Therapist at The Marriage Maintenance Center in Davidson. He can be reached at 704-408-4187or e-mail at bmitcham@bellsouth.net.
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