Depression has a number of manifestations. These tend to be related to age and life events (except bipolar disorder which can affect people of any age and circumstance) and include:-

Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder is also known as manic depression. It sufferers have periods of the deepest severe depression alternating with quite the opposite overwhelming symptoms of feelings of all powerfulness, tirelessness and invincibility. It needs very prompt medical treatment in its severe phases

Teen Depression

The problem of a teenager with depression is sadly frequently missed and the kind of behaviour changes detailed below need to be taken seriously in teenagers.

Post Partum Depression

Post Partum Depression (postpartum depression) affects women who have just given birth and is due to the rapidly changing hormonal levels. It too needs prompt medical intervention as it can be severe, life threatening and of very rapid onset.

Seasonal Affective Disorder

Seasonal Affective Disorder is also know by its appropriate acronym SAD. This is thought to be due to lack of sunlight in people who live in areas with low winter sunshine. Sunlamps used for a couple of hours a day throughout the winter are often helpful (works with me!. ed)

Symptoms of Depression

Depression has many symptoms that fall under four headings. Those to do with mood; those to do with thought or those to do with motivation and physical symptoms.

Those to do with mood include:-

• sadness deepening to gloom, the loss of ability to enjoy normal activities leading to withdrawal from emotional involvement with others and an increased tendency to cry.

Those to do with thought include:-

• feelings of inadequacy, devaluing of their efforts, difficulty in making decisions and feeling that they are always wrong.

Those to do with motivation include:-

• apathy and withdrawal from activity.

Finally at a physical level, depressed people:-

• feel run down, are almost always tired and suffer from almost any physical symptom

Sleep is usually disturbed, typically causing the sufferer to wake in the early hours and not be able to get back to sleep again, or to sleep fitfully, waking tired and unrefreshed.

Depression Treatments

Modern Western Medicine

Drugs used in depression include tricyclic antidepressants, such as Amitryptiline and Dothiepin; the more modern selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors such as fluoxetine (prozac), sertraline (lustral) and citalopram (cipramil); noradrenergic and specific serotonergic antidepressants  such as mirtazapine (zispin) and Norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake inhibitors such as bupropion (zyban).   All these have side effects and problems and are not suitable for many people. Depression is an area of disease where greater benefits should be obtained by combining drug therapy with talking or other complementary therapy, the drug being used to break the vicious downward circle to enable the healing of the complementary therapy to work and make both redundant.

SAD responds in many people to the use of sunlamps