Video Transcript: What is Depression?

Depression is the leading cause of disability in the world. In the United States,  close to 10% of adults struggle with depression. But because it's a mental  illness, it can be a lot harder to understand than, say, high cholesterol. One  major source of confusion is the difference between having depression and just  feeling depressed. Almost everyone feels down from time to time. Getting a bad  grade, losing a job, having an argument, even a rainy day can bring on feelings  of sadness. Sometimes there's no trigger at all. It just pops up out of the blue. Then circumstances change, and those sad feelings disappear. Clinical  depression is different. It's a medical disorder, and it won't go away just because you want it to. It lingers for at least two consecutive weeks, and significantly  interferes with one's ability to work, play, or love. Depression can have a lot of  different symptoms: a low mood, loss of interest in things you'd normally enjoy,  changes in appetite, feeling worthless or excessively guilty, sleeping either too  much or too little, poor concentration, restlessness or slowness, loss of energy,  or recurrent thoughts of suicide. If you have at least five of those symptoms,  according to psychiatric guidelines, you qualify for a diagnosis of depression.  And it's not just behavioral symptoms. Depression has physical manifestations  inside the brain. First of all, there are changes that could be seen with the naked eye and X-ray vision. These include smaller frontal lobes and hippocampal  volumes. On a more microscale, depression is associated with a few things: the  abnormal transmission or depletion of certain neurotransmitters, especially  serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine, blunted circadian rhythms, or specific  changes in the REM and slow-wave parts of your sleep cycle, and hormone  abnormalities, such as high cortisol and deregulation of thyroid hormones. But  neuroscientists still don't have a complete picture of what causes depression. It  seems to have to do with a complex interaction between genes and  environment, but we don't have a diagnostic tool that can accurately predict  where or when it will show up. And because depression symptoms are  intangible, it's hard to know who might look fine but is actually struggling.  According to the National Institute of Mental Health, it takes the average person  suffering with a mental illness over ten years to ask for help. But there are very  effective treatments. Medications and therapy complement each other to boost  brain chemicals. In extreme cases, electroconvulsive therapy, which is like a  controlled seizure in the patient's brain, is also very helpful. Other promising  treatments, like transcranial magnetic stimulation, are being investigated, too.  So, if you know someone struggling with depression, encourage them, gently, to  seek out some of these options. You might even offer to help with specific tasks,  like looking up therapists in the area, or making a list of questions to ask a  doctor. To someone with depression, these first steps can seem insurmountable. If they feel guilty or ashamed, point out that depression is a medical condition,  just like asthma or diabetes. It's not a weakness or a personality trait, and they  shouldn't expect themselves to just get over it anymore than they could will 

themselves to get over a broken arm. If you haven't experienced depression  yourself, avoid comparing it to times you've felt down. Comparing what they're  experiencing to normal, temporary feelings of sadness can make them feel  guilty for struggling. Even just talking about depression openly can help. For  example, research shows that asking someone about suicidal thoughts actually  reduces their suicide risk. Open conversations about mental illness help erode  stigma and make it easier for people to ask for help. And the more patients seek treatment, the more scientists will learn about depression, and the better the  treatments will get.