you can be depressed without suffering from depression. Obviously. When your depressed, your body tends to slow the production of seritonin...essentially a happy chemical that attaches itself to neurological receptors and make you feel content. When somethings got you down, the body slows the production, keeping you from being happy. Now, this is a perfectly normal thing to have happen when something happens such as a broken relationship, the death of a friend etc. (Low seritonin levels can also be a genectic problem, meaning that you don't need something to make you depressed, you just are and can also be the result of just a general unhappyness with your life ie social standing, family life etc) The problem is caused when the body doesn't naturally increase the release of seritonin as a result of the healing process. This is when clinical depression can set in. Most psychiatrists won't consider someone as being clinically depressed until the person has felt this way for a long time..such as longer then 6 months straight, though this probably varies from doctor to doctor. There are several different types of depression, major depression, dysthymia and bi-polar.
Major depression would be the most common. This can occur at one moment (how long it lasts can vary) in your life, such as after a traumatic event, and then disapear forever, or come back several years down the road.
Dysthymia is chronic depression. A person who suffers from dysthymia has a daily depressed mood for at least two years. Suffers usually have low-energy, suffer from sleep and/or apetite disturbances and low self esteem. This person often can't remember not feeling depressed ever in their life. This is a chronic imbalance in seritonin levels.
Individuals with bi-polar disorder have a unique pattern of mood cycles, combining depression and manic episodes, that is specific to that individual. There is strong evidence that bi-polar disorder has genetic links and typically begins in adolecence and continues through adult life.
All types of depression are treatable, but treatment isn't always effective. Psychotherapy combined with anti-depressent medication is the best treatment, drugs alone is usually about as effective as healing a broken arm with pain killers.
....that's just a quick overview.
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'You're old enough to know that you won't get a lot of things in life because you don't have tits' - One of the 1/4 pipe builders at snowjam winnipeg to a couple young boys in response to why we'd let 3 girls on the ramp and not them
Don't think just jump.
