1.Some people say that depression is the “cold of the soul”.
This analogy is not appropriate, the cold is a self-limiting disease, usually you do not care about it, as long as you drink more water and rest properly, it can get better by itself. Although depression is periodic, the ongoing pathological changes in the brain are there, but you can’t see them. Moreover, as the number of episodes increases, the period of episodes will become shorter and the symptoms will become more and more severe, and of course, the organic damage to the brain will become more and more profound.
2, many people believe that depression is a purely “psychological”, “mood” problem, the result of psychological entanglement, in other words, the product of personality deficiencies, weak willpower, internal conflicts, life stress and poor interpersonal relationships.
This view is only a small part of the right. Those factors mentioned above may sometimes be the triggering cause of depression, but they are not the real core cause, many people have those undesirable factors, but they do not suffer from depression. This mechanism is professionally called the “ignition effect”, which means that once a certain factor is “activated” by some environmental triggers at the beginning, it will continuously “ignite” the program of subsequent episodes. In a sense, this program is genetically “set”.
3. “I understand everything, so I am not depressed”.
People with depression usually do not have obvious cognitive problems, that is, they are always “awake”. Therefore, depression is not a disease of the mind, but a disease of the emotions. Being awake and recognizing that you are in a bad mood is itself a characteristic of mild to moderate depression.
4. “I have nothing to worry about, I just can’t sleep well, so I am not depressed”.
There are some patients with depression who do not have an obvious low mood, but usually feel a loss of original interest. The majority of patients have sleep disturbances or a variety of physical complaints, such as headaches, back pain, or gastrointestinal discomfort. Many of the physical discomforts that are not substantiated are related to emotional problems (depression, anxiety), and these people are bounced around major hospital polyclinics, wasting a lot of medical resources that are actually caused by problems such as depression and anxiety.
5. How common is depression?
Taking one year as the span of statistics (annual prevalence), conservative survey results show that 3-4 out of 100 people suffer from depression, and taking the span of a person’s life as the span of statistics (lifetime prevalence), it can be 10-15%. You can calculate for yourself how many people suffer from depression in China. Among them, the prevalence of women is double that of men.
6. How many people with depression commit suicide?
A conservative estimate is that about half of depressed people have suicidal thoughts or attempted suicide, and about 5-10% of them eventually die by suicide. Approximately 280,000 people commit suicide and more than 2 million attempt suicide each year in China. Most of them can be diagnosed as depression.
7. Depression is a disease of the brain.
There are many scientific studies that confirm the existence of organic brain alterations in depression, only the available tests are not sufficient to routinely detect these alterations. These changes include certain chemicals in the brain, and there are even many studies that have found pathological changes in the structure of the brain as well.
8. Many people believe that depression does not require medication.
Although there is evidence that psychological counseling and therapy can equally alleviate and treat depression, psychotherapy usually requires more complex ongoing intervention techniques, and under existing conditions, it is still difficult to access such medical services in China, and psychotherapy is only for those with mild to moderate depression. For severe as well as with suicidal ideas and behaviors, and those recurrent depression, psychological conflict is not obvious, physical symptoms are severe or even with psychotic symptoms, timely and effective drug treatment must be carried out.
9. Many people believe that medications can have serious side effects and harm the brain.
In fact, there is a lot of evidence to confirm that drugs can protect brain cells from damage. Any medication will have some side effects, but the incidence of fatal danger is usually not much greater than the odds of an air crash. Regardless of the trade-offs, timely medication is necessary. There are also many people who are only superstitious about Chinese herbal treatments, and as far as research findings go, no herbal medicine has been shown to have a definite therapeutic effect. The side effects may be small (and may not be), but no effect is the same as useless.
10. Depression is a treatable disease.
About 80% of patients can be significantly improved or cured by systematic treatment.