Major Depression Symptoms, What to Look For
Major Depression Symptoms, What to Look For
Depression can affect everyone from all ages and walks of life. Here are the 9 key major depression symptoms that you should look out for if you are suspecting depression.
Depressed mood – People with depression have a depressed mood for most of the day most days of the week for at least two weeks. This may be noticed by themselves or by others around them.
Lack of interest – A very common sign of depression is the loss of interest in activities. This means that what somebody may have found pleasurable once does not get any pleasure out of it now.
Weight loss – People with depression lose their appetites, which eventually leads to weight loss. On rare occasions someone may actually eat more, and gain weight.
Insomnia – This is another common symptom associated with depression. People often stay up at night and can’t sleep because of an array of psychological and physical reasons. Some people may sleep more often, and that would then be hypersomnia.
Fatigue – This is a very common symptom that people complain of and depression is just one of the hundreds of causes.
Psychomotor agitation or retardation – This may be described as restlessness or a sense of being slowed down respectively. It is usually something that is observed by others rather than the depressed person themselves.
Guilt – People with depression often have feelings of worthlessness and guilt. The guilt in this case is excessive and inappropriate, meaning that it is blown out of proportion to the actual factor making an individual feel guilty.
Impaired concentration – Some people with depression have a diminished ability to concentrate and feel that they can’t think clearly.
Suicidal ideation – This is one of the more serious symptoms of depression where a person may have recurrent thoughts of death, is contemplating suicide or has already attempted suicide.
What is Chronic Anxiety
What is Chronic Anxiety
Everyone experiences anxiety at some point in their life and it can be due to any number of reasons. This is normal for life. There are also some people who tend to worry much more than the average person but this still may not be considered an anxiety disorder or as being a chronic problem. Chronic anxiety is when a person is constantly experiencing high levels of anxiety and stress. This stress and anxiety when left without treatment can lead to depression, social phobias and panic attacks. Many times the person is unable to function as they would normally because of this anxiety. This inability to function affects their work, work relationships, home life and personal relationships.
The symptoms of such a disorder include sweating, chest pains, rapid pulse, amongst other things such as headaches. As one can imagine, anyone experiencing these symptoms will have difficulty in many types of everyday activities. Although many people who suffer from chronic anxiety feel that they are the only ones experiencing this, about five percent of the population has been diagnosed with this disorder.
For an individual who has chronic anxiety, it is quite the opposite to those without it. As an example, most individuals can feel stressed out over an incident at work or by having a bad day but they can get away from it by reading, watching the television or doing something else to relax. Most of the time, these individuals can switch off the anxiety at some point. With chronic anxiety, the individual spends much more time being stressed out and anxious and perhaps much of the time may be spent thinking about these things. There does not appear to be an off switch available for it.
There are a number of ways to help this including starting a healthier lifestyle with a better diet, exercise and making sure there is some relaxation time during the day. Other forms of assistance can come from therapy and perhaps a course of anti anxiety medications depending on the situation.
Best Drugs for Anxiety
Best Drugs for Anxiety
Top drugs for anxiety are known as anti-depressants. There are quite a few medications that are prescribed to help people cope with anxiety, but every medicine is not idea for everyone. Knowing this, you may want to do a little research on what could be prescribed and why. Every medication has different side effects and reasons for being prescribed. Most of the time, you will be sent on a rollercoaster ride by your doctor. This ride will be caused by you and your physician working together to figure out which medicines will be best for you. This is known as the trial and error period.
As of now, the medicines that work the best are Zoloft, Lexapro, Prozac, Paxil, and Wellbutrin. These are all anti-depressants that are commonly prescribed to help with anxiety. Although these medicines are not the complete answer to anxiety and will not remove any symptoms entirely, only temporarily, they do make a big difference.
Zoloft is a medication that belongs to a group of medications known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Before you decide that this medicine is right for you, it may be a good idea to weigh your options and consider each and every aspect of the medicine. Zoloft has been known to cause depression and obsessive compulsive symptoms. This is definitely something you will want to think about before starting this medication.
Lexapro on the other hand, is available only by prescription, and like Zoloft, belongs to the SSRI group of medications. Lexapro has been proven to be safe with adults and children ages 12 to 17 for the treatment of anxiety. Before you start to use this medication, there are a few things that you might want to consider. If you are trying to become pregnant, are pregnant or breast feeding, you may want to reconsider this medication and consult your physician about other options.
How to Prevent Driving Anxiety
How to Prevent Driving Anxiety
Driving is something that the majority of people learn to do as soon as it is legally permitted to do so but this being said, there are still a high percentage of these individuals that experience anxiety while they are driving. This can be triggered by various causes such as the weather conditions, now knowing the area or the fear of driving in general.
There are a number of ways to prevent driving anxiety or at least to lower the incidence of it. Much of this is through self help although professional help is certainly available. Self help generally starts with altering the beliefs. Many times, anxiety is started because the person believes a certain thing such as that they will probably lose control of the vehicle while driving or many other scenarios. It is important for the person to realize that while it is possible, there are many vehicles on the road every day that are safe and they need to have confidence in their own driving skills.
In terms of driving skills, having driving education or some other form of course is very helpful and can prevent much of this driving anxiety. Knowing the routes around where the individual is to be driving can also help as well as knowing the precautions for driving in certain types of weather.
In certain cases, therapy might be needed. Such cases as in when a person has been the cause of an accident or been involved in an accident and has experience anxiety in the past because of these things. The therapist can certainly help to go through the scenarios and help to remove any negative thoughts that could possibly cause anxiety.
Anxiety while driving can cause more problems for the driver than actually driving because it takes away from the concentration. It is important to prevent this type of anxiety or at least limit it as much as possible.
Anxiety Physical Symptoms in Women
Anxiety Physical Symptoms in Women
Anxiety in women may seem more common than in men because they tend to be more open about admitting it. Nevertheless, the symptoms in the different sexes usually occur differently with many aspects. While men may display more physical symptoms, there are more psychological than anxiety physical symptoms in women.
Physical Symptoms
The physical symptoms that can occur in women are much the same as those in men. These stem from activation of certain parts of the nervous systems. As such, the emotion disturbance and onset of anxiety manifests itself through the physical routes. This includes things like difficulty breathing, heart palpitations, tremors, sweating, and nausea. Further than this you may also experience dizziness, light-headedness, chest pain and numbness.
The Psychological Symptoms
The psychological symptoms may not be as obvious as the physical symptoms and as such it can often be confused with something else. This includes general fatigue and lack of energy and concentration, as well as sleeplessness and restlessness. Amongst the more serious worries is the recurrent thoughts of the factor causing the anxiety and displaying physical symptoms of anxiety during this. This may also manifest as nightmares, which causes further anxiety, which just perpetuates the cycle.
Which is More Telling?
People are different and few people have the exact same cause of their anxiety, so people react differently.
There is huge debate about whether physical or psychological symptoms are more indicative of anxiety, but no matter what the answer to that is, the important thing is that if any of these symptoms are present there is a problem that needs to be sorted out. Physical symptoms are easier to pick up, so in this way men are more easily diagnosed. At the same time women are more likely to tell of their emotions so this makes diagnosis much easier.
