Depression
Abstract
Depression as a disorder that is associated with the brain functions affects the feelings, actions and thoughts. It causes one to develop feelings of sadness and lack of interest in activities that one had been enjoying previously. It is usually associated with several risk factors which include; genetic predisposition, drug abuse or withdrawal, physical and sexual abuse and changes in life events among others. There are various ways in which one can reduce depression. One would also engage themselves in spiritual matters like prayers and meditation. Setting goals, relaxation, music therapy and setting time for personal beauty are some of the lifestyle habits that would play an important part in reducing stress. There is also aspect of engaging oneself with social groups, friends, pets, therapists. Others include; physical care like regular exercises, good sleeping patterns, hydrotherapy, yoga and regular water intake. There are campaigns that are meant to solve the problem of depression especially among the students. There also several coping mechanisms that are used by the family affected by depression.
Introduction
Depression is a disorder that is associated with the brain functions and affects the feelings, activities and thoughts. It causes one to develop feelings of sadness. Sometimes an individual become uninterested with the things they had been enjoying before. An individual might present with signs like thoughts of suicide or death, feelings of un worthlessness or guilty, fatigue or loss of physical energy, difficulty to sleep or excessive sleeping, having depression or sad moods, changes of appetite, lass of enjoyment on the activities once used to enjoy before and difficulty in making decisions, concentrating or thinking. Risk factors of depression are genetic predisposition, drug abuse or withdrawal, physical and sexual abuse and changes in life events among others. There are several ways in which one can reduce depression and they include; Physical self-care, emotional self care and being engaged in support groups. There are campaigns that are meant to solve the problem of depression especially among the students. There also several coping mechanisms that are used by the family affected by depression. It is essential to develop ways to enable people to control and avoid the risk factors that predispose one to depression.
Risk Factors
Genetic Predisposition
About 40% of depression cases are usually associated with inheritance. Inheritance cases mostly increase through the adolescents because of the heritable depression causes that are associated with age (Williams & Hill, 2012). This means that it is possible for one to get depression if there is a family history of the same. The dominant genres are passed from the parents to the children. This might happen from one generation to another.
Social difficulties
Depression is mostly associated with tangible challenges. These challenges include: having academic difficulties in school, bullying, disrupted care and rejection by the parents basing sexuality aspects (Williams & Hill, 2012). Sometimes a parent might discriminate the children basing on the gender. They might show much care to either the male and leave the female alone or vice versa. This would lead to a discriminated child getting a sense of lack of belongingness since the parents are not embracing them in the right manner. As a result, the child develops depression due to a feeling of loneliness. An individual with academic difficulties like lack of school fees or poor performance regardless of the much efforts to learn might develop depression. Bullying is also another factor that usually occurs among the students while in the school and causes depression.
Abuse
This might involve sexual or physical forms of abuse to an individual. Physical abuse may involve being told off by the teachers or parents while sexual abuse involves being harassed sexually and the effects might be noticeable until puberty (Williams & Hill, 2012). Emotional abuse is also associated with depression. An incidence of sexual abuse might lead to depression as the victim will keep recalling the act. This would make them feel disgraced. Stigmatization from the people who might be having information concerning the episode might also cause depression to the victim. Sometimes the individual might develop various conditions from the incidences like rape, for instance; a young lady who undergoes a misfortune of rape might be diagnosed with inability to carry pregnancy to term and deliver safely. This might cause depression as the individual is very young and with no or one or two kids. They may also face a challenge of lack of spouses to marry them which would facilitate the development of depression. Physical abuse where the teacher might happen to hate a child or even have a tendency of beating might cause learner to develop depression.
Life Events
These are mostly caused by parents when they change the events of life. The changes mostly affect children. This involves both good and the good things (Williams & Hill, 2012). Examples of the good things is like graduating or moving into somewhere new or having a new born baby. Other factors include retirement, divorce and separation of the parents or death of a loved one.
Parent Loss and Poor Parental Care
Loss of parents especially mother is mostly associated with depression in most of the cases. For example; cases where a mother dies or gets very ill might cause the children to go into depression. Low parent care which is aimed at providing warmth to the children might also be associated with depression.
Cognitive Factors
Difficulty in schooling might cause depression which in turn would result in to decline in performance. The depression might go to a greater extent if the student or pupil is not taken care off as they can drop out of school having the fact they are performing poorly (Williams & Hill, 2012).
Anxiety
Anxiety disorders increases the likelihood of someone getting into depression. An individual who had been through a traumatizing event might develop depression later in life (Williams & Hill, 2012). This is usually very dangerous as the victim finds it difficult to adapt to the usual life activities.
Lack of Enough Exercise
Inadequate exercise is mostly associated with depression and panic disorders. Adequate exercise increases the sense of wellbeing and control as well as pain threshold (Williams & Hill, 2012). It would be therefore important for people to exercise regular to reduce depression.
Early Bipolar
There is usually depression before the first episode of mania. The individual becomes depressed for a while before they become manic (Williams & Hill, 2012). They usually tend to be quiet and not interested with activities that are happening in the environment.
Drug Abuse
Drug abuse or withdrawal is also associated with many known cases of depression. Some drugs might bring the individual down that they had been and tend to be depressed most of the time (Williams & Hill, 2012). Withdrawal of the drugs also causes depression as the victims had been kept high by the drugs. Immediately they stop consuming them, they break into depression.
Ways to Reduce Depression
Physical Self-Care
This can be done through regular exercises, nutrition, having enough sleep, hydrotherapy, acupuncture, yoga, touch, medication, breathing exercises and regular water intake. Something like exercise enables to boost the endorphins which are responsible for the feeling of goodness (Bloch & Bloch, 2009). Exercise is a very nice strategy when it comes to reduction of depression. One should choose to practice on something that one enjoys most. Having enough sleep enables to reduce depression and having less might cause the situation to worsen. Good nutrition also plays an important role in improving the situation. It is also advisable to reduce the stressful moments in life and work on happy moods and well-being. Stress triggers depression and also prolongs its period. One should think about all the activities that cause stress like unsupportive relationships, work overload or health problems. Once an individual has managed to identify the stressors, the next step would be planning on how to avoid them or reduce their implications.
Spiritual Connection
One can connect themselves with spiritual matters as they would play an important role in reduction of depression. This includes engagement in meditation, prayers, inspiration texts and self-forgiveness (Bloch & Bloch, 2009). One would also take a step of finding meaning and purpose and being involved in the spiritual community.
Lifestyle Habits
This includes a number of factors like relaxation, setting goals, finishing the tasks, humor, stress reduction, pleasurable activities, music therapy, setting time for beauty, time management and creative self expression. These activities will play an important role in reduction of depression (Bloch & Bloch, 2009). On should engage in the activities thy moist enjoy. . It is also encouraged that someone should get involved in practices of relaxation techniques as they could help in reducing the depression symptom. On should also engage in setting realistic goals. After setting the goals, the next step would be working on the same. If someone is a fun of music, it advisable that they should listen to some and even dance. This enables to reduce depression as the mind is kept busy hence no time to engage in irrational thoughts that would trigger the condition.
Social Support
This involves seeking support from people who are close associates. They include; family, therapist, friends, support groups, minister or rabbi, pets and animals, volunteer work and day treatment (Bloch, & Bloch, 2009). Engaging oneself with a pet during the very lonely and desperate moments usually helps to reduce depression. It also give someone a sense of being important.
Mental or Emotional Self-Care
This involves activities like having optimistic thoughts, self-forgiveness, being engaged in psychotherapy, daily affirmations, feeling personal feelings, being engaged in mood chatting, reading a gratitude journal, overcoming the depression stigma, release of the negative beliefs and working through the grief process. Having happy thoughts does not help in reducing depression (Bloch & Bloch, 2009). The best way is having positive thoughts. One should avoid being too hard on self. There should be less cool statements that give more descriptions in a realistic manner. Make sure that there is no strict perfection and this has been a major cause of depression. One should have socialization with positive people. There should also be an initiative of investigating on the coping mechanism of the people who look bright. One should try the optimism of the bright people in order to cope with personal difficulties. Whenever there is a negative thought, taking a step of writing it down in a notebook plus the things that have caused it to happen and then checking on it during the happy moods moment is a nice way of reducing depression also.
Campaigns and Awareness
Student Mental Health in California
This is la campaign that had been meant to improve the mental status for the students in California. It had been funded by California counties by the use of funds from Mental Health Services Act of the year 2004. Emails had been sent by the campaign requesting the principals to give ratings concerning the severity of the problems found in the schools being related to the mental health of the students (Kaufman, et al. 2015). The high as well as middle school teachers had been asked concerning some problems like depression and suicidal attempts. These activities had been carried out inform the California Mental Health Services Authority concerning the efforts they were expected to put in order to improve the mental health of the students. The thoughts of suicide and depression are very frightening issues that can be faced by an individual in life. Unfortunately, many people have not been able to act on those two things and this includes the students.
Coping Styles for Families Affected by Depression
The strategies applied in coping with depression at the family level plays a n important role in the wellbeing of an individual both physically and psychologically. They help the individual during the episodes of events which are stressful in life or negative situations. There are several coping mechanisms. The first one is emotional-oriented coping strategy. This is usually associated with minimal-adaptive personality features and distress that affect one psychologically (Undheim, Wallander & Sund, 2016). It has been found that the reverse of this regards the coping of the task. Skills in problem solving have been reported to be related closely to task oriented strategy by minimizing the impacts of the problem. Studies have been showing that the individuals who are depressed usually rely on emotional related strategic coping mechanism. The predictors of anxiety, depression, and stress are the most people who use mal-adaptive coping. This mainly is associated with young students in college and among the youths in China who are in the age bracket of 8-14 years. Orientation of high emotions and being focused in low tasks types of coping had been related to behavioral and emotional problems. The stress perception and avoidant or emotional coping had been associated with problems in adjustment among the old adolescents of age bracket 10-14 years. However, avoidance oriented strategic coping style among adults had been lower among a major group of depressed individuals as compared with the healthy controls. The styles of coping are have been reported to mediate the connection between mental health and events of stress in life partially among the adolescents.
Conclusion
Depression as a disorder that is associated with the brain functions affects the feelings, actions and thoughts. It causes one to develop feelings of sadness and lack of interest in activities that one had been enjoying previously. It is associated with several factors which have been discussed in the paper above including anxiety, social factors, drug abuse, lack of enough exercise, early bipolar conditions, cognitive factors like difficulty in schooling and loss of parents either single or both of them. There is also lack of parental warmth, stressful life events, physical or sexual abuse. There are several ways of reducing depression as discussed in the paper above. Some of them include; physical care like regular exercises, good sleeping patterns, hydrotherapy, yoga and regular water intake. One would also engage themselves in spiritual matters like prayers and meditation. Setting goals, relaxation, music therapy and setting time for personal beauty are some of the lifestyle habits that would play an important part in reducing stress. There is also aspect of engaging oneself with social groups, friends, pets and therapists. The Student Mental Health in California is a campaign that had been aiming at dealing with the issues that disturb the minds of the students. It had been enabling the California Mental Health Services Authority in impacting them with knowledge concerning the efforts that they were being expected to put into practice in order to improve the mental health of the students. There has been discussion in the paper above concerning the coping strategies by the families that have been affected by depression. Emotion-oriented, task-oriented, mal-adaptive, high emotion and low task-focused and avoidance oriented coping mechanisms.
Reference
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Kaufman, J.H. Seelam, R., Woodbridge,M.W., Sontag-Padilla,L.,Osilla, K. C., ., & Stein,B.D.(2015) Student Mental Health in California’s K–12 Schools
Williams, J., & Hill, P. D. (2012). A handbook for the assessment of children's behaviours. Oxford: Wiley-Blakcwell.
Undheim, A. M., Wallander, J., & Sund, A. M. (2016). Coping strategies and associations with depression among 12-to 15-year-old Norwegian adolescents involved in bullying. The Journal of nervous and mental disease, 204(4), 274-279.
