Spiritual and Emotional Health
Depression (Part I)
Book: The 10 Best-Ever Depression Management Techniques (Understanding How Your Brain
Makes You Depressed & What You Can Do To Change It) by Dr. Margaret Wehrenberg
Workbook: The 10 Best-Ever Depression Management Techniques Workbook
Depression Facts:
 10% of American population (about 21 million people) suffer from some sort of
depression
 Major depressive disorder is a recurring and chronic illness, frequently returning for two
or more episodes, with episodes that often last 2 years or more.
 Major depressive disorder is the leading cause of disability in the U.S. for people ages
15-44.
 Depression is currently the fourth-most disabling illness worldwide, and according to the
World Health Organization, it will be the second leading cause of disability by the year
2020.
 About 10% of men and up to 25% of women will experience depression in their lifetime.
Depression Symptoms:
 Loss of interest or pleasure in things that might have otherwise been interesting
 Loss of concentration (low mental energy)
 Lethargic: Feeling completely unmotivated, loss of appetite, trouble sleeping, etc
 Negative mood (feeling of hopelessness and helplessness; feeling inadequate and
worthless)
 Inability to enjoy life or relationships
 Inability to feel rewarded
 Rumination
 Suicidal ideation
Depression can be diagnosed from:
 Mild to severe
 Recurrent or single-episode
 With or without psychosis
 Cycling between depressed and manic moods for those with bipolar disorder.
Effects of depression:
 According to the National Institute of Mental Health, “people with depression fare even
more poorly at work, socially, and with their families than do people with a variety of
general medical conditions”
Types of Depression:
1) Endogenous depression: This type of depression is genetic and neurobiological – the
kind of depression that people are “born to have.”
2) Depression as a consequence of attachment problems or abuse: This type of
depression may look similar to endogenous depression in the length of time symptoms
have been around, but these symptoms are consequent to an early life loss or adversity,
or failure of parents to provide a secure base and safe haven for the developing child.
Victims of child abuse or neglect.
3) Situational or stress-induced depression: Serious stress, often chronic, can deplete the
brain of critical neurotransmitters and thus oversensitize it to stress – the outcome of
which may be a hard-to-shake depression. For example: Long term caregiving, etc.
4) Posttraumatic stress depression: The outcome of traumatic-stress experience
occurring later than childhood – for example, depression emerging after an accident,
injury, natural disaster, medical trauma, or combat related trauma.
Symptoms of each type of depression:
1) Endogenous depression:
a. Low cognitive energy (“I just can’t think about that now” or “I just can’t decide
what I should do” or “I just sit and look at the work I need to do”)
b. Persistent negative mood, irritability, and limited pleasure or interest in daily life
without any particular trauma or stress they identify as causing their lethargy
c. Passive and hard to motivate
2) Depression as a consequence of attachment problems or abuse:
a. Frequently display a tendency toward remarkable, dramatic shifts of mood from
feeling okay to feeling seriously depressed.
b. Negative expectations about the world and their relationships
c. Unable to calm down or self-soothe in times of challenge
d. Tend to plunge into despair whenever minor upsets occur. And when they
plunge, they may engage in impulsive self-injurious behavior such as drinking,
gambling, risky sexual escapades, or even suicide.
3) Situational or stress-induced depression:
a. “Burnout” – Exhausted and isolated, natural outcomes of prolonged exertion
caused by chronic stress…. Loss of a job, loss of a loved one, work burnout, or
exhaustion from long-term care of a sick family member
b. Sleep disruption, self-medication with alcohol or over-the-counter medications
4) Posttraumatic stress depression (PTSD):
a. Varying degrees of intensity: From moderate to severe and even suicidal
b. Sudden feelings of helplessness which are set off by emotional or environmental
events. Sometimes these triggers are obvious; or, can be very subtle and
subconscious and harder to recognize
c. The feelings of helplessness are very intense and leave the person unable to
generate solutions to problems
Neural Networking: A brain function which is always a factor in feeling depressed no matter
what the underlying causes are or the type of depression someone struggles with. This
feature is relevant because of the way humans store and retrieve memories:

When something triggers one memory, a network of similar memories is automatically
activated.

Aspects of the memory – the emotions and the details – connect to similar experiences.
For example: Hosting a child’s birthday party may bring back memories of birthday
parties you had at that age, along with many small details about those events that you
thought you’d forgotten.

This is an efficient way to recall information. However, in depression, it accounts for
the tendency to recall every similar negative experience once a person starts to think
about one negative experience.
For example: Back to the birthday party, if you are suffering from depression, and the
cake you made for the party accidentally gets burned, you may react to that by
remembering all the other times you’ve “failed” as a parent and fall into a downward
spiral of self-approach.

This is true of moods as well…. Once a person gets into a bad mood, the whole network
of “previous bad moods” my light up, causing the person to reenter the memories of
negative thoughts, negative expectations, memories of negative outcomes and
disappointments, and even negative behavior patterns that reinforce the mood.
To Sum Up:

Depression is downward spiral of a negative thoughts that automatically and
subconsciously spiral downward as other negative thoughts and memories attach
themselves to the initial thought.

In other words, someone suffering with depression just can’t be justifiably “sad” or
“down” about one, current situation…. It automatically multiplies into something much
bigger.

A person who doesn’t suffer from depression can keep the current difficult situation,
negative thought, etc. to just the current situation. They can keep it in perspective and
recover quickly without increasing negative thoughts about themselves.