Depression - A lone warrior's battle against his inner self ! Practical tips to treat depression

Depression is a term which is widely misunderstood these days. People think that depression is something related to one's mind and could be easily overcome by having a positive attitude on life. The only problem with this issue is that, whenever you tell that you are depressed to someone, they evaluate you, your problems, they judge you and tell that this is nothing to be depressed about and ask you to move on your life. Rather than arriving at a solution, you feel stupid about yourself.

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So what is this depression which keeps popping up on our social media and news feed almost daily. Depression is a mood disorder. It makes us feeling emotionally vulnerable and makes us to lose interest in things which we normally like to do in our daily life.

So rather than boring you with specific technical and scientific details about depression let me tell you how a depressed person feels in his head.

1) He finds it very difficult to wake up in the morning as he is completely depleted of energy or so he thinks.

2) He doesn't have the drive to do any work or do anything productive using his work/free time.

3) Regarding hunger, either he may feel very hungry all the time or have no appetite at all.

4) His existence is questionable to him, as he thinks that he is of no use to anyone.

5) He becomes irritated or loses his temper so often that he distances himself from people so as not to hurt them.

6) They are so much emotionally challenged that they break into tears even on small things like a shoe not fitting in or if something of theirs breaks.

7) They may become victims of substance abuse like alcohol, smoking or any other drugs.

8) They lose interests in things which they normally enjoy to do like watching television or going to movies.

9) They will constantly keep on procastrimating things till the last minute.

10) Regarding sleep pattern, either they may have insomnia or they could sleep most of their time.

How to deal with a depressed person?

The lack of awareness among friends and family members plays a major role in worsening the mental and emotional well being of the affected person. For example, the family members must be compassionate towards the person rather judging them or forcing them to come out of it. He must come out of his depression at his own pace. They can be supportive to him, listening to his problems with an open mind, encouraging him, taking him out for a lunch or dinner (not against his will) and by not comparing him with their former self or any others.

To all the parents out there, "Nothing is more important in your life than dealing with your depressed son/daughter" One of the things his/her family members could do, is to empathise with him. Make him realise that what he is going through is understandable and encourage him that things will be better. These words by them maybe little but it will do wonders for him. Make him not feel like an odd one in the family and help him to communicate better and open up with his problems. Even when his parents understand him, there will always be a limit to the things which he can share with them. In these scenarios, the role of friends play a major role. A person may have a lot of friends - from his primary school to his workplace. But there will be only a few friends to whom he can open up without any inhibition. Those friends play a major role in helping him come out of depression. For example, if a person is dealing with a break-up in his relationship, he cannot speak about those with his family members. These friends, rather than pointing out his faults and being a critic or encouraging him to do this or that, they can simply hear him out whenever he approaches and give out neutral unbiased opinions about the situation and try to divert him from the source of his problem or cause and engage him in any other activities he likes.

Now let's see tips to treat depression and overcome it, at an individual level:

1) Believe in your parents. They always want to provide you the absolute best. So sit and talk with them and open up.

2) Do not open up or don't tell your problems to persons who you don't believe or whom you don't know well. Because these persons, rather than encouraging or helping you to overcome depression, they become judgemental and make things worse for you.

3) Meditate. Don't go watching YouTube videos or look upon how to meditate on the web. Join a professional yoga or mediatation center and learn meditation from the scratch. Because, meditation is not as simple as it sounds to reap the benefits out of it. Meditation if done in a proper and ethical way can help you overcome all types of depression. All it needs is belief and willpower. As exercising is for physical wellbeing, meditation is for spiritual wellbeing which could inturn help in developing yourself as a good human being.

4) Exercise. You may ask how could a depressed person gather the energy to go and work out. It seems like a difficult and uphill task. But believe me, once you gather energy and work out for one day you will start to see the benefits. Execising will help to release endorphins which are nothing but chemicals in your brain which when released, will improve your well being and help you have a positive outlook on life. Kick start your day with a 30 minute exercise to develop a sense of wellbeing.

5) Get engaged in activities which you like to do. Even if you don't feel like doing it, just start the activity. Go and sit in a movie theater or put some music on your mobile and start listening to it. The more you do, the less stressed you become.

6) Try to be social as much as possible. Reach out to your friends or family members. Rather than discussing your problems, just have a healthy conversation with them about the topic of your choice, listen to them and spend quality time with them.

7) Flush the negative thinking. Be it about a person or a situation. An outcome of a situation will always have two outcomes. Either good or bad. We need to always look at both outcomes and weigh them. Let us take an example. A person is studying for his exam. If a person has a strong belief that he is going to fail the exams, he will fail the exams because he will not put much effort into it. A person who is overconfident that he will pass will look upon down on his subjects and can lead to negative results. A healthy way of looking at the exams is to have strong will to pass the exam and a slight fear of failing the exams. His will has to be stronger than the fear. This will empower the person to study thoroughly the syllabus at the same time the fear will help him not to look upon anything in his syllabus. The same applies to all the situations in our life. Have a positive outlook on all the situations in life with a slight note of what you would do if things don't go your way.

8) Avoid consuming alcohol as it is going to make things worse, avoid foods which have a high fat content, avoid caffeine and eat a healthy balanced diet. 9) Do not try to attract unwanted attention by telling people that you are depressed or suffering from depression. You are not going to gain anything from it. As I told before, tell those things to people who you trust completely. 10) Last but not least, believe in yourself. What you say is what you become. Keep telling positive affirmations that everything is going to turn out good, then everything will turn out good. If you keep telling yourself that you are a failure then you will become one in due time. Seek professional help from a psychiatrist or a medical professional only as a last resort when all the self help steps listed above failed or you want to go the easy way by taking anti depressant or any other drugs to make you feel better. Being a doctor myself, I am not against these drugs. But remember, only these drugs are changing the chemical imbalance in your brain and you are not doing anything for it. If you try to follow and develop a healthy lifestyle and positive outlook on life, you will develop a sense of accomplishment and improve all of your physical, emotional and spiritual well being.