Forty percent of the annual number of suicides in China are depressed. Moreover, depression is a low age and highly prevalent disease, and people with stressful jobs like white-collar workers and doctors, and even students, can become vulnerable. On average, 1 out of 5 people suffer from depression, so it is also known as mental flu. It is mainly characterized by low mood, reduced interest, pessimism, slow thinking, lack of initiative, self-blame, poor diet and sleep, fear of suffering from various diseases, feeling unwell in many places, and in severe cases, suicidal thoughts and behaviors.
Although there are 26 million people suffering from depression in China, the number of people who do not seek medical attention accounts for 62%. People who have signs of depression will have the self-assurance not to scare themselves when it is not serious at first. They don’t take it seriously and let it get serious, then they hesitate to go to the doctor, but most of them don’t go to the doctor because they are a little embarrassed and afraid of being talked about.
The majority of people’s understanding of depression remains that they are in a bad mood and think that they will be better if they are enlightened and guided. Depression is a disease, not a bad mood. Some depressed people are afraid to go to see for fear of being chewed, and bear everything alone, as if a mute in a cry for help.
Of course it does not mean that once a relative or friend around has depression should treat him differently, if excessive attention is paid, it will give the patient a sense of alienation of being abandoned by the world and make them rightfully treat themselves as patients. The curiosity or sympathy of some unrelated people may be seen as ridicule by the patient and will aggravate the condition even more.
The correct attitude should be to treat the person lightly, not to make a fuss that he has a serious illness, and not to be furious or indifferent when the illness strikes.
We can understand the typical symptoms of depression not only to review themselves in time, but also to give timely help to people around them when they have problems.
1.Self-evaluation is too low
After suffering from depression, you tend to devalue yourself excessively and look at your present, past and future with a critical, negative and negative attitude. Feeling useless, the future is dark, there will be a strong sense of self-blame, guilt, uselessness, worthlessness, helplessness, and in serious cases, there can be self-guilt, the concept of suspicion. This is why depressed patients are usually at risk of suicide.
2.Depressed state of mind
This is also the most important feature of depressed patients and is widely known by everyone. Those who are less ill will experience poor mood, sadness, and moping throughout the day. Those who are seriously ill will experience pessimism, despair, and eventually suicidal tendencies.
3.Lack of pleasure
This phenomenon is called “switch off”, the patient will lose interest in everything in daily life, and gradually lose the ability to study and work. The patient no longer experiences pleasure in all kinds of recreational activities, and wants to stay in the house all day long, not even interested in eating. Severe cases may refuse to socialize and alienate relatives and friends.
4.Continuous fatigue with no obvious reason
Not only will there be problems psychologically, but also physically, you will feel tired, and you will feel overwhelmed in everything you do. Lack of enthusiasm and initiative in life and work, and even for their own food and drink can not take care of.
5, sexual function is reduced
Because of the influence of psychological factors, in the early stage of the disease, there will be a decrease in sexual desire, including impotence in men, women appear sexy deficiency.
6.Sleep disorder
Most of the suicides of depressed patients occur in the early hours of the morning, because most depressed patients will be accompanied by sleep disorders. Especially in the latter part of the night to early morning, it is very easy to wake up from sleep and difficult to continue to sleep, wake up will be in a depressed mood difficult to extricate themselves, so suicide mostly occurs in this time.
7, have strong suicidal thoughts
Inner very painful, pessimistic, desperate, feel that life is a burden, not worth staying, to die for relief, can produce strong suicidal thoughts and behavior.
8. Diurnal variation
The mood of the disease will have obvious changes with time, will be in the early morning or morning into the mood of the low period, in the afternoon or evening will be slightly better.
Depression as a mental illness, in addition to medication, can also be psychological intervention, which is something that we ordinary people can do.
Depressed people, because they are pessimistic in their dealings, will attribute the cause of negative or failed events to their own problems, while for positive things they will instead attribute them to other people’s, objective factors. Normal people, on the other hand, will attribute failure to others and success to their own internal factors. Therefore, the attribution style of depressed patients and normal people is completely opposite, so it is extremely helpful to intervene in the attribution of patients.
When patients encounter setbacks or failures, we should guide them to attribute the failure results to insufficient efforts or other external factors, patients will have confidence to change the failure results, and their personal mood will tend to be optimistic and avoid pessimistic and disappointing emotions.
In addition to external interventions, the patient’s own efforts can also help control the disease. The first step is not to set goals for oneself that are difficult to achieve, but to break down one’s tasks into as many easily achievable parts as possible. And it is important to face up to your condition and not take on too much work and responsibility to avoid excessive psychological stress.
Do not allow yourself to make too many major decisions, such as things like transferring jobs or divorce. When you encounter an event is not to rush, you might as well write down your feelings, then analyze him, recognize him, face up to the negative manifestations within your mind, and then find a way to get rid of him.