Depression: A Definition and Discussion

What I know
In daily life, we will always meet some happy things, but also some difficulties or sad
and hopeless situations. Usually, everybody will feel sad if they encounter anything
undesired. When you get a bad grade, when your mother blames you, and when you lost your
favorite toy- all these situations will make you feeling sad or unhappy.
Most of us just feel sad when the undesired events come. However, there is a group of
people always feeling unhappy, no matter what kinds of situation they are involved in. Even
they are walking in the warm sunshine, they are feeling themselves in the cold dark room.
This kind of psychological problem is called depression, which makes people lost the interest
towards life, and no longer be motivated or energetic.
In my opinion, depression is a terrible problem, as it usually leads to suicide in the end.
One of my friends has once suffered from depression. He said he never felt happy, and
always found the life boring and hopeless. He talked to his parents what he felt, but they did
not consider the situation seriously. He searched online and find that depression is a kind of
disease, thus he asked his parents to bring him to the doctors. However, his parents refused to
do so, as they think it is a bad thing to having a “mental disease”, and other people would
have some biased thinking. My friend did not receive any help, and in the end, he tried to
suicide. Only this time, his parents started to face and realize his problem, and finally brought
him to the doctor.
I have already know that depression is a psychological disease, which would make
people feeling lonely, hopeless and exhausted all the time no matter what kind of
environment they are involved in. However, I know little things about its mechanisms, as
well as the curing methods. Thus in this essay, I will conducted a series of research, in order
to achieve a deeper understanding regarding this disease.

What I want to know
Firstly, I want to have a clearer definition of depression. How is it defined in a more formal
and clinical way?
Secondly, I want to know more about the mechanism of depression. That is, why people
can have depression? What kind of physiological changes in our body, or is it simply due to
what we are thinking?
Thirdly, I want to know what lead to depression. Is it because the events we encountered
daily, or is it inherited from our parents? What we can do to avoid this kind of psychological
disease?
And finally, I am interested that, if we unfortunately had the disease, what can we do to
cure it? What are the available therapies nowadays? Should we treat it as a normal
physiological disease by taking in medicine, or more rely on the psychological ways, such as
visiting the psychological doctors?
The Search and what I learned
According to the information provided by the World Health Organization, depression is
defined as a kind of common mental disorder, and is always characterized by a series of
negative feelings including sadness, feelings of guilt or low self-worth, and loss of interest
and pleasure. At the same time, depression is not restricted to psychological feelings, but also
physical feelings. People with depression will always have disturbed sleep, and low-leveled
concentration with feeling of tiredness. In addition, it was mentioned that depression is not
equals to bad mood- it is a much longer lasting, and might be recurrent depends on personal
situation. According to the data provided by WHO, there are more than 350 million people
suffering from depression, and 800 000 patients are finally suicide.
In addition, depression could be mainly divided to two catalogues (“Depression”, 2),
including recurrent depressive disorder and bipolar affective disorder. The previous one is

considered as the classical and common depression, while the second one means that both
manic and depression could be found on such patients.
From this searching, I realized that depression is more than simply feeling bad, but
should be more precisely defined with a series of symptoms. In addition, I started to know
that there is two catalogues of depression. It is important for patients to tell their catalogue, so
that they could receive the effective treatment.
For the mechanism of depression, according to Rot et al. (Figure 1), it could be found
that depression relies on the neurobiological mechanism. Different kinds of chemicals will
form a balance in the synapse, and when the balance is interrupted, people will suffer from
bad emotions and even depression. According to Figure 4, it could also be found that for
depression patients, some brain areas are affected, such as amygdala and hippocampus. Thus
from here, I can concluded that depression is not simply a psychological disease. It is highly
related on physiological changes especially in the brain areas.
At the same time, many factors will lead to depression. In Enns et al. ’s study (272-284),
it could be found that personality is an important factor, and several kinds of personality are
statistically significant related to depression. At the same time, there are also other
explanations. In Sullivan et al. ‘s research (1552), they found depression is a familial
disorder, which means that the disease is somehow inherited from family. However, they had
also mentioned that environment is also an important factor.
From this part, I realized that depression could be inherited. This might lead to bias on
depression patients in the society, as they will be no longer considered as good life partner
due to their depression, while no health baby can be born with their gene. In my opinion, this
is not fear to depression patients. They should have the right to enjoy the same life as other
people, and we should not discriminate them as abnormal people. Also, depression can be
inherited does not mean that a child of depression parents will 100% have depression. As

mentioned in the study, individual would also be highly affected by the environment. Thus,
depression parents can also provide a good family environment for the child, and we should
not have any bias on the patients any more.
Finally, depression could be cured both in medical and psychological method. It is
already well known that depression can be cured by medicine, which could help to balance
the chemicals in brain, as mentioned in the mechanism part. At the same time, more and more
attentions are put on the role of psychotherapy. According to Persons et al. (283), they had
reported that psychotherapy plays important role in treatment. Also, they highlighted that the
patients should choose formal clinic, in order to achieve highest efficiency.
Thus, it could be concluded that depression is curable. It is not so scary as people
imagine. More and more treatments are in the process of development, and we can believe
the patients suffering from depression will finally be cured.
Conclusion
In this essay, I conducted a series of researches regarding depression. After the
searching, I have obtained a better understanding about depression. It is a psychological
disease, but also highly relies on physiological changes. At the same time, it is related with
chemical balance in brain. The reason of getting depression could be various, including
heritage, environment and personality. Finally, depression can be cured, with medicine as
well as psychotherapy. With these deeper understanding, I found that it is important to avoid
any bias or discrimination on depression patients. We never know what others are
experiencing, thus we should always try to be kind to them.

Work Cited

aan het Rot, Marije, Sanjay J. Mathew, and Dennis S. Charney. “Neurobiological
mechanisms in major depressive disorder.” Canadian Medical Association Journal 180.3
(2009): 305-313.
Persons, Jacqueline B., Michael E. Thase, and Paul Crits-Christoph. “The role of
psychotherapy in the treatment of depression: review of two practice guidelines.” Archives of
general psychiatry 53.4 (1996): 283-290.
Enns, Murray W., and Brian J. Cox. “Personality dimensions and depression: review and
commentary.” Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 42.3 (1997): 274-284.
Sullivan, Patrick F., Michael C. Neale, and Kenneth S. Kendler. “Genetic epidemiology of
major depression: review and meta-analysis.” American Journal of Psychiatry (2000).
“Depression.” WHO. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.
“Depression.” World Health Organization. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.