Depression Symptoms and Diagnosis

Depression actually is a common disease and more common than hypertension or diabetes.

What is depression?

• Depression is the most common form of emotional disorder. Depression actually is a common disease and more common than hypertension or diabetes.
• The prevalence rate of depression cases in lifetime in any country are between eight to 10 percent. Few researches by World Health Organization (WHO) and World Bank discover that depression is the fourth most serious disease in crippling peoples' will in the world.
• This disorder also the most common cause of death results of committing suicide. WHO estimated deaths resulted from suicide in the Asia Pacific region is higher than tuberculosis disease.
• Women are more tend to be suffering depression over man with the ratio of 1:2.
• Some reports revealed that about nine percent of Malaysians are patients who experience serious stage of depression.
• Similar with global statistics, depression also is the fourth serious disease in Malaysia. But if by gender fraction, it is the third place for women and 10th for man.
  

Depression Diagnosis

To diagnose depression, other medical problems that could cause symptoms must be taken out from the patient earlier.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV (DSM-IV), depression diagnosis could only be done if there are at least five symptoms of depression which occurs for the period of two weeks. The presence significant of these symptoms must be obvious to the level that it affects work and social aspects of a person.

The depression symptoms include:

• Negative emotions
• Anhedonia (Greek's word meaning no enjoyment; cannot feel the pleasure of daily favored activity; lack of pleasure or of the capacity to experience it.)
• Reckless feeling
• Lost of interest and sense of fun
• Lost of interest for sexual relationship
• Feeling of sorrow
• Tired sense
• Lost of body weight and eating appetite dramatically
• Experiencing sleep disorder
• Easily become sensitive
• Restless
• Confused
• Weak concentration rate
• Lonely
• Negative feeling: hopeless, useless sense, guilt, wanting to commit suicide.
• Physical problems includes: backache, headache, chronic pain and stomach problem.
  

There no certain root that cause depression. This problem is usually rooted from the merge of several factors. Following are among possibility that could cause depression:

• Psychological factors: stress from some situation or environment and certain incident (trauma).
• Genetic factor, inferiority complex, serious or chronic physical illness.