The Basics of Having Depression

Series Summary

Depression is an extremely common psychiatric disorder which manifests itself through several symptoms, including loss of interest in usual activities, persistent decreased or depressed mood, and sometimes thoughts of suicide. Clinical depression affects between 7 and 18 percent of the population at some point in their lives before the age of 40, and one episode of depression is likely to lead to more depressive episodes in the future. While there are several causes for depression, some of the most common causes of depression include genetic predisposition, medical conditions, sleep quality, or psychological factors such as a death in the family, or poor self esteem.

In this free video series, our expert will teach you how to identify signs of depression. If you suspect you, a friend or family member is suffering from depression, let our expert explain the various symptoms of depression and how attitude, medication, or hormones may affect mood. Learn about how trouble concentrating, weight loss or gain, poor school or job performance and stomach aches can all be signs of depression. Also get tips for identifying drug and alcohol abuse, relationship trouble and social isolation as depression symptoms. Depression is one of the major causes of suicide and can also severely affect a persons enjoyment of life, so be sure to check out this free video to catch serious clinical depression signs before it is too late.

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Brenda F. Dixon. I'm the owner of Life Help Now in Nashville, Tennessee, and we're here with Expert Village. I wanted to tell you a little bit about myself before I got started talking about the causes and symptoms of depression. I'm a licensed clinical social worker and I've been licensed for many years. I've actually been in practice for 18 years. I've specialized with adolescence and children. I've begun programs with adolescence and children and worked in detail with extremely severely disturbed children. I work with individuals and marital couples on communication skills. I have people come to me and say I'm having trouble talking to my husband or my wife, what do I do? We sit down and talk about that and work things out so it works better for them. I'm actually licensed in both Kentucky and Tennessee. I have my own private practice. I'm affiliated with Life Help Now."