Depression - An Issue Worth MUCH More Attention And Conversation
You know something is very wrong at the fundamental level in this time, when just a simple search of the word 'Depression' shows "Very common". And we are here to talk about it, covering the cause symptoms, treatment and Most Importantly Precautions.
Due to extensive use of social media in our daily lives, we are all very familiar to the concept of memes, and we all see, share, like and pass it on to our friends. It has become a part of our lifestyle.
And mostly the audience of these memes are the teenagers and the people of the working age, say 20-30 years. And according to many studies, these are the major group of population which is affected by Depression. As they also are in large numbers on social media, depression has kind of become day to day term in this culture and people joke about it almost as easily as they joke about any other thing. And not to say that that is wrong or right, but here there are two sides of this thing. It is neither 100% good or 100% bad. First let us talk about the positive impact of this, firstly humor has always been an effective way to cope up with negative emotions and depression is also not spared from that. It has always been said that 'Laughter is the best Medicine' and rightly so. Because though it may seem that it is just a stupid post, but if it brings smile to a person's face in the times when they are feeling low can be very healing experience. It is difficult to be sad when you are smiling, as simple as that. But depression does not cause only sadness, it can cause constantly depressed behavior, silent aggression, and in severe cases it can even induce suicidal thoughts. Now to talk about the negative impacts of the current social media culture on a person facing depression is that the person on the verge of depression is pushed off that edge, by reading all those posts posing that everyone in this generation (mostly teenagers and young adults) is depressed and they unknowingly (or knowingly) send a message to those people that it is okay to be depressed as everyone is. That is where the problem lies, it is NOT OKAY to be depressed, it is not something that people should be proud of and Mental Health is not a joke, it is an issue which needs to be understood much better and we need to bring that change in our culture.
Now we need to discuss about the cause of depression(here I'll focus on the young generation), why is it so common among today's generation and yet literally(almost) nobody is really wanting to do anything about it.
First, our lives have greatly changed and influenced by the technological advancements around us, especially in last ten years. And the Major component of this change is Internet, there was a time when it was accessible through only limited ways like a cyber cafe or a desktop. Then there was the advent of smartphones and we haven't looked back since. We now have smartphones and they are so fast, efficient and great at so many things that they have been an integral part our life and it is kind of impossible to imagine our lives without them for almost anyone who uses a smartphone. Most of our usage of smartphone is for using social media, we all have seen, at any public place, whenever people get some time off even for a few minutes they take out their phone and scroll through social media. That has been kind of our daily life, and not to say that it is wrong but it is definitely not that great too. Due to this huge impact of social media we all are on some levels hoping to get more followers, more likes and because of that we are influenced by people who have them, now the thing to notice here is that it is nothing wrong on wanting to get more followers or more likes but the point here is what are the extents you are willing to push yourself for that. We all have seen people posting things on social media about how great their life is and how privileged they are and their lavish lifestyle, and on some levels we all long for a lifestyle like that, but the thing we are missing here is that it not always a bed of roses for anyone (literally anyone) nobody is always happy and that is fine, but when we see people in our feed so happy all the time we kind of feel that we are always unhappy and our lives are not interesting and that's where the roots of depression are planted. This slowly gets more and more obsessive with time and when people don't get attention they start to panic and then soon it turns into depressive thoughts. This is a huge problem and it mostly affects teenagers because they have just entered the social media space and soon they start to see that everybody's life is so happening, so interesting, so rich except theirs, this kind of pushes them to be fake and pretentious and when they do not get enough attention even after doing that they are just left disappointed.
Now to talk about the other group of people, who lived their teenage life before the advent of social media, they are a bit luckier because an adult person will not fall for the fake and pretentious world, right? Well, I wish I could say yes, but setting that problem aside because it has similar effect on adults as it has on teenagers, we need to look at another problem. We are now having so many sources of entertainment in-house that we rarely go outside. Not to say it is bad but it is good to sometimes just get out in the open and connect with the nature and the outside world. It is good to just communicate with people and have little outings with your friends and to interact with real people rather than just spending time alone. It is sometimes okay to be alone and take some time off but to be alone all the time can be rather destructive than constructive, and it is unhealthy mentally to be alone all the time. To have conversation with people can help you broaden your horizons, learn something new, and these are just the side benefits of a healthy conversation with a good friend. It may not seem that serious an issue at first but when people start to be alone all the time they tend to get full of themselves and kind of shield them from the world and that may block a few negative things but it stunts the growth of the individual overall. And when they cannot cope up with their fellow colleagues and friends they start to feel the pressure and that may be the push off the edge of depression for them. Also another issue the Adults face is heartbreak,it is as it is very difficult to cope up from the failure of a relationship and now thanks to social media we have some pages feeding off of people's emotional vulnerability. It is very easy to connect to a sad post about heartbreak and keep on crying about that, and that is the tendency that feeds the followers and likes to these kind of pages. Not to say it is wrong to be sad, but it is wrong to never move on from that feeling and be sad all the time, this is the tendency which makes you overly cautious whenever you see a new relationship forming and that may be toxic and a new good relationship might just get delayed and delayed. And in the meantime people end up getting depressed feeling deprived of a healthy relationship. And thus it is important to move on from a failed relationship and not let that damage you permanently.
Now we have talked and discussed about what are the causes for depression and we need to focus on what are the symptoms. The symptoms are not as easy to notice here as in other diseases. Yes, it is a disease and it needs to be cured like any other disease, it is absolutely normal if you are or you think someone you know is facing it. We all go to the doctor for when we have a cold, or a broken bone, there we do not think that it is not normal to have a broken bone, because the priority is not that the broken bone is common or not, priority is to get it fixed and it is the same with depression or any other mental health issue. But we need to be able to identify that we have an issue so that we can bring it up to a professional or seek help. Depression affects our entire lifestyle, from sleep patterns to behavior to food pattern (if that's what it is called). A person suffering may be inclined to Hypersomnia or Insomnia, constantly depressed behavior, anxiety, hopelessness, apathy, discontent, uninterested in everything, sudden weight gain or loss, and in extreme cases even suicidal thoughts. So, when there are so many symptoms why do we mostly fail to identify it? Well, mostly because the person facing depression does not want to open about it because of the fear that 'what will people say?'. We still have a social stigma around that "Mental Illness = Person is Mad" and that forces the people to run away from their issues and just pushes them deeper into depression. And thus whenever we feel that someone around us maybe going through it we need to have a conversation with them and we need to help them, encourage them to seek help for it.
Let's now talk about Treatment. The best way is to seek professional help from a therapist or a doctor. But not everyone wants to or can go to a therapist, although I would strongly suggest getting an opinion of a professional therapist before implementing any of the methods I am about to present in this article. If you feel like you are affected from depression, try to talk about it with your parents, your trusted friend, and try to have a conversation about why you are feeling so. It may not feel like much but when you open up about your feelings in front of a trusted family member or a trusted friend you will find yourself much more relieved find that you are much stronger than you realize. Also when you start to get these feelings of depression you will notice that you will connect to sad posts and sad songs and your playlist will soon compile up of sad songs. The music we hear has a very strong impact on us, whether we realize it or not... Music has great impacts on our mind and thus it is important to check what is the kind of music we hear. We need to listen to music which gives us positive outlook on life and which gives us positive feelings. Whenever you feel low, I would suggest first a conversation with a trusted person and if that cannot be done then, listening to music, compile your playlist starting from a slow tempo-ed song and then add songs such that it increases the tempo and positive vibes than the last one and listen to that. Soon you will find that as the Tempo of the song increases you will also start feeling better and better which each new song. If you are suffering from a heartbreak or a failed relationship, those things can be really tricky to deal with and if you are suffering from a major relationship failure it may be suggested to seek professional therapy. Also to suggest, in this situation, you need to be around your family and friends and have real healthy conversation about it. You need to focus on the positive side of it (it can be really difficult). You need to accept that failure and not let it down your self esteem and your outlook on the life, you need to accept the fact that that phase of your life is over and soon something new will come along and life will go on, one relationship failure or a heartbreak doesn't define all the people that come into your life and you need to remember that.
Let us now get to the Last but very important part of the article, Precautions.
How can we avoid depression, what are the precautions we need to take so that we do not suffer from depression.
Firstly, we need to open up about it, we need to spark real conversation so that it is not a taboo topic, so that if a person is suffering from it can come up to their family and friends so that professional help can be sought.
We need to keep check on our social media habits and see for ourselves that we are not following the wrong trends and are not letting it disturb our peace of mind. I suggest a simple check for that...
We need to also check the kind of music we hear, because it has direct influence on the state of your mind. While music may help you feel great and unstoppable, it can also make you feel bad, sad and heartbroken. You need to keep check on your daily routine, and include extra activities in it, the more you interact with different kind of people the more you will learn and the more you will grow.
NOTE : I AM NOT A PROFESSIONAL THERAPIST WHATSOEVER, I HAVE JUST WRITTEN WHAT I HAVE LEARNED FROM MY ENVIRONMENT AND WHAT I THINK IS TRUE.
MENTAL HEALTH IS A REAL ISSUE AND I WILL STRONGLY SUGGEST THAT IF YOU ARE FEELING ANY SIGNS OF DEPRESSION OR ANY OTHER MENTAL HEALTH ISSUE, TO GO TO A DOCTOR OR A THERAPIST.
THERE IS NO SHAME IN HAVING MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS.
PLEASE DO SHARE THIS POST SO THAT WE MAY HAVE A HEALTHY CONVERSATION REGARDING MENTAL HEALTH AND BREAK THE WALLS SOCIETY HAS CREATED AROUND MENTAL HEALTH.
I am not against any group of people, or any social media, I myself use social media to reach to more people and I think it is a very important tool of our times. But when we use it excessively and without check it can pose severe threats and that's the issue covered in this article.
Do Comment your views and share this article and Don't forget to Subscribe to the Blog for such Articles. Stay healthy, Stay blessed, Stay kind:)
Now we need to discuss about the cause of depression(here I'll focus on the young generation), why is it so common among today's generation and yet literally(almost) nobody is really wanting to do anything about it.
First, our lives have greatly changed and influenced by the technological advancements around us, especially in last ten years. And the Major component of this change is Internet, there was a time when it was accessible through only limited ways like a cyber cafe or a desktop. Then there was the advent of smartphones and we haven't looked back since. We now have smartphones and they are so fast, efficient and great at so many things that they have been an integral part our life and it is kind of impossible to imagine our lives without them for almost anyone who uses a smartphone. Most of our usage of smartphone is for using social media, we all have seen, at any public place, whenever people get some time off even for a few minutes they take out their phone and scroll through social media. That has been kind of our daily life, and not to say that it is wrong but it is definitely not that great too. Due to this huge impact of social media we all are on some levels hoping to get more followers, more likes and because of that we are influenced by people who have them, now the thing to notice here is that it is nothing wrong on wanting to get more followers or more likes but the point here is what are the extents you are willing to push yourself for that. We all have seen people posting things on social media about how great their life is and how privileged they are and their lavish lifestyle, and on some levels we all long for a lifestyle like that, but the thing we are missing here is that it not always a bed of roses for anyone (literally anyone) nobody is always happy and that is fine, but when we see people in our feed so happy all the time we kind of feel that we are always unhappy and our lives are not interesting and that's where the roots of depression are planted. This slowly gets more and more obsessive with time and when people don't get attention they start to panic and then soon it turns into depressive thoughts. This is a huge problem and it mostly affects teenagers because they have just entered the social media space and soon they start to see that everybody's life is so happening, so interesting, so rich except theirs, this kind of pushes them to be fake and pretentious and when they do not get enough attention even after doing that they are just left disappointed.
Now to talk about the other group of people, who lived their teenage life before the advent of social media, they are a bit luckier because an adult person will not fall for the fake and pretentious world, right? Well, I wish I could say yes, but setting that problem aside because it has similar effect on adults as it has on teenagers, we need to look at another problem. We are now having so many sources of entertainment in-house that we rarely go outside. Not to say it is bad but it is good to sometimes just get out in the open and connect with the nature and the outside world. It is good to just communicate with people and have little outings with your friends and to interact with real people rather than just spending time alone. It is sometimes okay to be alone and take some time off but to be alone all the time can be rather destructive than constructive, and it is unhealthy mentally to be alone all the time. To have conversation with people can help you broaden your horizons, learn something new, and these are just the side benefits of a healthy conversation with a good friend. It may not seem that serious an issue at first but when people start to be alone all the time they tend to get full of themselves and kind of shield them from the world and that may block a few negative things but it stunts the growth of the individual overall. And when they cannot cope up with their fellow colleagues and friends they start to feel the pressure and that may be the push off the edge of depression for them. Also another issue the Adults face is heartbreak,it is as it is very difficult to cope up from the failure of a relationship and now thanks to social media we have some pages feeding off of people's emotional vulnerability. It is very easy to connect to a sad post about heartbreak and keep on crying about that, and that is the tendency that feeds the followers and likes to these kind of pages. Not to say it is wrong to be sad, but it is wrong to never move on from that feeling and be sad all the time, this is the tendency which makes you overly cautious whenever you see a new relationship forming and that may be toxic and a new good relationship might just get delayed and delayed. And in the meantime people end up getting depressed feeling deprived of a healthy relationship. And thus it is important to move on from a failed relationship and not let that damage you permanently.
Now we have talked and discussed about what are the causes for depression and we need to focus on what are the symptoms. The symptoms are not as easy to notice here as in other diseases. Yes, it is a disease and it needs to be cured like any other disease, it is absolutely normal if you are or you think someone you know is facing it. We all go to the doctor for when we have a cold, or a broken bone, there we do not think that it is not normal to have a broken bone, because the priority is not that the broken bone is common or not, priority is to get it fixed and it is the same with depression or any other mental health issue. But we need to be able to identify that we have an issue so that we can bring it up to a professional or seek help. Depression affects our entire lifestyle, from sleep patterns to behavior to food pattern (if that's what it is called). A person suffering may be inclined to Hypersomnia or Insomnia, constantly depressed behavior, anxiety, hopelessness, apathy, discontent, uninterested in everything, sudden weight gain or loss, and in extreme cases even suicidal thoughts. So, when there are so many symptoms why do we mostly fail to identify it? Well, mostly because the person facing depression does not want to open about it because of the fear that 'what will people say?'. We still have a social stigma around that "Mental Illness = Person is Mad" and that forces the people to run away from their issues and just pushes them deeper into depression. And thus whenever we feel that someone around us maybe going through it we need to have a conversation with them and we need to help them, encourage them to seek help for it.
Let's now talk about Treatment. The best way is to seek professional help from a therapist or a doctor. But not everyone wants to or can go to a therapist, although I would strongly suggest getting an opinion of a professional therapist before implementing any of the methods I am about to present in this article. If you feel like you are affected from depression, try to talk about it with your parents, your trusted friend, and try to have a conversation about why you are feeling so. It may not feel like much but when you open up about your feelings in front of a trusted family member or a trusted friend you will find yourself much more relieved find that you are much stronger than you realize. Also when you start to get these feelings of depression you will notice that you will connect to sad posts and sad songs and your playlist will soon compile up of sad songs. The music we hear has a very strong impact on us, whether we realize it or not... Music has great impacts on our mind and thus it is important to check what is the kind of music we hear. We need to listen to music which gives us positive outlook on life and which gives us positive feelings. Whenever you feel low, I would suggest first a conversation with a trusted person and if that cannot be done then, listening to music, compile your playlist starting from a slow tempo-ed song and then add songs such that it increases the tempo and positive vibes than the last one and listen to that. Soon you will find that as the Tempo of the song increases you will also start feeling better and better which each new song. If you are suffering from a heartbreak or a failed relationship, those things can be really tricky to deal with and if you are suffering from a major relationship failure it may be suggested to seek professional therapy. Also to suggest, in this situation, you need to be around your family and friends and have real healthy conversation about it. You need to focus on the positive side of it (it can be really difficult). You need to accept that failure and not let it down your self esteem and your outlook on the life, you need to accept the fact that that phase of your life is over and soon something new will come along and life will go on, one relationship failure or a heartbreak doesn't define all the people that come into your life and you need to remember that.
Let us now get to the Last but very important part of the article, Precautions.
How can we avoid depression, what are the precautions we need to take so that we do not suffer from depression.
Firstly, we need to open up about it, we need to spark real conversation so that it is not a taboo topic, so that if a person is suffering from it can come up to their family and friends so that professional help can be sought.
We need to keep check on our social media habits and see for ourselves that we are not following the wrong trends and are not letting it disturb our peace of mind. I suggest a simple check for that...
- Do you feel pressurized if you do not get certain amount of likes or not have certain amount of followers?
- Do you look at people on your social media account and feel that they have the most wonderful life imaginable?
- Do you feel your lifestyle or you are inferior than people on your social media account?
- Do you feel the pressure to follow a trend just so you can be relevant?
- Do you feel like you are using social media excessively?
- Do you feel like you are seeing too much of the sad posts?
- Do you feel like it is important to just show a certain kind of lifestyle on your social media account?
We need to also check the kind of music we hear, because it has direct influence on the state of your mind. While music may help you feel great and unstoppable, it can also make you feel bad, sad and heartbroken. You need to keep check on your daily routine, and include extra activities in it, the more you interact with different kind of people the more you will learn and the more you will grow.
NOTE : I AM NOT A PROFESSIONAL THERAPIST WHATSOEVER, I HAVE JUST WRITTEN WHAT I HAVE LEARNED FROM MY ENVIRONMENT AND WHAT I THINK IS TRUE.
MENTAL HEALTH IS A REAL ISSUE AND I WILL STRONGLY SUGGEST THAT IF YOU ARE FEELING ANY SIGNS OF DEPRESSION OR ANY OTHER MENTAL HEALTH ISSUE, TO GO TO A DOCTOR OR A THERAPIST.
THERE IS NO SHAME IN HAVING MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS.
PLEASE DO SHARE THIS POST SO THAT WE MAY HAVE A HEALTHY CONVERSATION REGARDING MENTAL HEALTH AND BREAK THE WALLS SOCIETY HAS CREATED AROUND MENTAL HEALTH.
I am not against any group of people, or any social media, I myself use social media to reach to more people and I think it is a very important tool of our times. But when we use it excessively and without check it can pose severe threats and that's the issue covered in this article.
Do Comment your views and share this article and Don't forget to Subscribe to the Blog for such Articles. Stay healthy, Stay blessed, Stay kind:)
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