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What is depression? - Helen M. Farrell

IntermediateAmerican accentAnimated lesson4 min

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Transcript: 41 sentences

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  1. 0:08 Depression is the leading cause of disability in the world.
  2. 0:11 In the United States, close to 10% of adults struggle with depression.
  3. 0:16 But because it's a mental illness, it can be a lot harder to understand than, say, high cholesterol.
  4. 0:22 One major source of confusion is the difference between having depression and just feeling depressed.
  5. 0:28 Almost everyone feels down from time to time.
  6. 0:31 Getting a bad grade, losing a job, having an argument, even a rainy day can bring on feelings of sadness.
  7. 0:38 Sometimes there's no trigger at all.
  8. 0:40 It just pops up out of the blue.
  9. 0:42 Then circumstances change, and those sad feelings disappear.
  10. 0:46 Clinical depression is different.
  11. 0:48 It's a medical disorder, and it won't go away just because you want it to.
  12. 0:53 It lingers for at least two consecutive weeks, and significantly interferes with one's ability to work, play, or love.
  13. 1:01 Depression can have a lot of different symptoms: a low mood, loss of interest in things you'd normally enjoy, changes in appetite, feeling worthless or excessively guilty,
  14. 1:11 sleeping either too much or too little, poor concentration, restlessness or slowness, loss of energy, or recurrent thoughts of suicide.
  15. 1:21 If you have at least five of those symptoms, according to psychiatric guidelines, you qualify for a diagnosis of depression.
  16. 1:29 And it's not just behavioral symptoms.
  17. 1:31 Depression has physical manifestations inside the brain.
  18. 1:35 First of all, there are changes that could be seen with the naked eye and X-ray vision.
  19. 1:41 These include smaller frontal lobes and hippocampal volumes.
  20. 1:45 On a more microscale, depression is associated with a few things: the abnormal transmission or depletion of certain neurotransmitters,
  21. 1:53 especially serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine, blunted circadian rhythms, or specific changes in the REM and slow-wave parts of your sleep cycle,
  22. 2:03 and hormone abnormalities, such as high cortisol and deregulation of thyroid hormones.
  23. 2:10 But neuroscientists still don't have a complete picture of what causes depression.
  24. 2:15 It seems to have to do with a complex interaction between genes and environment, but we don't have a diagnostic tool that can accurately predict where or when it will show up.
  25. 2:26 And because depression symptoms are intangible, it's hard to know who might look fine but is actually struggling.
  26. 2:32 According to the National Institute of Mental Health, it takes the average person suffering with a mental illness over ten years to ask for help.
  27. 2:41 But there are very effective treatments.
  28. 2:43 Medications and therapy complement each other to boost brain chemicals.
  29. 2:48 In extreme cases, electroconvulsive therapy, which is like a controlled seizure in the patient's brain, is also very helpful.
  30. 2:56 Other promising treatments, like transcranial magnetic stimulation, are being investigated, too.
  31. 3:02 So, if you know someone struggling with depression, encourage them, gently, to seek out some of these options.
  32. 3:09 You might even offer to help with specific tasks, like looking up therapists in the area, or making a list of questions to ask a doctor.
  33. 3:16 To someone with depression, these first steps can seem insurmountable.
  34. 3:21 If they feel guilty or ashamed, point out that depression is a medical condition, just like asthma or diabetes.
  35. 3:28 It's not a weakness or a personality trait, and they shouldn't expect themselves to just get over it anymore than they could will themselves to get over a broken arm.
  36. 3:37 If you haven't experienced depression yourself, avoid comparing it to times you've felt down.
  37. 3:43 Comparing what they're experiencing to normal, temporary feelings of sadness can make them feel guilty for struggling.
  38. 3:50 Even just talking about depression openly can help.
  39. 3:53 For example, research shows that asking someone about suicidal thoughts actually reduces their suicide risk.
  40. 4:00 Open conversations about mental illness help erode stigma and make it easier for people to ask for help.
  41. 4:07 And the more patients seek treatment, the more scientists will learn about depression, and the better the treatments will get.

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