How to Diagnose Holiday Depression

Video Transcript

"Hi! My name is Rachel Blackston and I am here on behalf of Expert Village and I am a private practice mental health counselor here in Orlando, Florida. I work at a private practice called Twelve Stones Counseling Center and it is located in Ovieda, Florida. I am here to talk about how to deal with depression over the holidays. The last coping mechanism is to get out there anew; whether it is taking a walk, joining your local gym, you know getting a little bit of head start on the new year when everyone is joining gyms or to engage in team sports. With that there is a wonderful psychological aspect that is helpful of walking and moving and it will give you some time to process all that is going on in the holiday season, so get out there and exercise. So with the symptoms of clinical depression may be constant feelings of sadness and irritability or very melancholy mood. You may have disturbances in your sleep. For example, too much sleep or too little. You may have changes in appetite. You may not be feeling as hungry as normal and not have a desire to eat or you may find you are turning to food too much. Finally you may feel that there is feeling of worthlessness and most importantly people will have thoughts of suicide and it is extremely important that if you are having any thoughts of harming yourself or someone else, that you immediately contact your doctor, go to an emergency room or call 911 or there is a suicide line. It's 1-800-SUICIDE that you can call. You may be wondering how depression is diagnosed. There are four main aspects that depression affects. The first is mood. You may be feeling very irritable, you may have excessive crying or sadness, feeling very melancholy and down. The second depression affects your thoughts. You may be feeling very hopeless about the present and the future and feeling very pessimistic about life. The third is in the area of the body. You may have changes to your appetite. For example, not eating as much as you usually do or eating more. You may have disturbances in your sleep pattern. You are going to find some differences in behavior, inability to concentrate, extreme lethargy or you may find that you have excessive crying and that you just don't want to do things that you usually had an interest in. For example, maybe you love scrap booking and all of a sudden you are having difficulty to be motivated. If you think you may be clinically depressed, it is important that you contact your doctor, psychiatrist or professional counselor. "