Depression - a disease of our time.

Studies worldwide show: Depression, like cardiovascular disease, has become the most prevalent disease of our time. This is a common disorder that affects millions of people. According to various researchers, they are suffering up to 20% of the population in developed countries.

Depression - a serious disease that dramatically reduces the work and brings suffering to the patient as well and his family. Unfortunately, very few people are aware of the typical manifestations and consequences of depression, so many patients are assisted, when the state takes a protracted and severe, and sometimes - and is not provided. Virtually all developed countries, health services are concerned with the situation and put its efforts to disseminate information about depression and its treatment modalities.

Depression - disease of the body. Typical signs of depression
The manifestations of depression are diverse and vary depending on the form of the disease. The most common symptoms of this disorder:

Emotional expression

* Tosca, suffering, distress, gloom, despair
* Anxiety, a sense of internal tension, waiting for trouble
* Irritability
* A sense of guilt, frequent self -
* The frustration is, the reduction of self-confidence, self-reduction
* Reduction or loss of ability to experience pleasure from previously enjoyable classes
* Decreased interest in the world
* Loss of ability to feel any sense (in cases of deep depression)
* Depression is often combined with anxiety about health and the fate of loved ones, as well as with fear seem untenable in public places

Physiological manifestations

* Sleep disorders (insomnia, drowsiness)
* Changes in appetite (loss or overeating)
* Violation of bowel function (constipation)
* Decreased sexual
* Decreased energy, increased fatigue in normal physical and intellectual conditions, the weakness
* Pain and a variety of unpleasant sensations in the body (for example, in the heart of the stomach muscle)

Behavioral manifestations

* Passivity, difficulty engaging in purposeful activity
* Avoiding contact (propensity for solitude, loss of interest in other people)
* Waiver of entertainment
* Alcoholisation and substance abuse, giving temporary relief

The thought of

* Difficulty concentrating, focusing
* The difficulty of the decision-making
* The preponderance of dark, negative thoughts about themselves, about their life on the world as a whole
* Dark, pessimistic vision of the future with a lack of perspective, irrational thoughts about life
* Thoughts of suicide (in severe cases of depression)
* Availability of thinking about their own useless, insignificant, helpless
* Slow thinking

For diagnosis «depression» it is necessary that some of the symptoms persisted for at least two weeks.

Depression should be treated.
Depression is often perceived as a very sick, and others as an expression of bad character, laziness and selfishness, promiscuity or natural pessimism. It should be remembered that depression - not simply a bad mood (see expression above), a disease which requires the intervention of specialists and well enough to treat. The earlier put the correct diagnosis and proper treatment initiated, the greater the chances for a swift recovery, the fact that depression does not recur again and did not take severe form, accompanied by a desire to commit suicide.

What usually prevents people ask for help about depression?

Often people are afraid to turn to specialist mental disorders because of the alleged negative effects:

* The potential social restrictions (of registration, a ban on driving motor vehicles, and travel abroad)
* Conviction in the case, if someone learns that a patient is treated with a psychiatrist
* The fear of negative influence of medication, which is based on the widespread, but not the correct understanding of the harm of psychotropic substances

Often people do not have the necessary information and properly understand the nature of his condition. They think that if their condition is linked to the understandable difficulties in life, it is not a depression, a normal human reaction to take place independently. Often happens that the physiological manifestations of depression contributed to a belief that there were serious systemic diseases. This is an opportunity for treatment to a medical practitioner.

80% of patients with depression first seek help from general practitioners, and the correct diagnosis is established about 5% of them. Adequate therapy gets even smaller number of patients. Unfortunately, the usual admission clinic is not always possible to delineate the physiological manifestations of depression and the presence of a true systemic diseases, which leads to production of false diagnosis. Patients appoint symptomatic therapy (medication «for the heart», «to the stomach», «of a headache»), but the improvement does not occur. Having thought about the hard, unrecognized systemic diseases, the mechanism that leads to a vicious circle Enhancement depression. Patients spend a lot of time on clinical and laboratory tests, and usually get to a psychiatrist from the severe, chronic forms of depression.