What Are the Signs & Symptoms of Depression?

Video Transcript

"I'm Dr. David Thomas, I'm a practicing psychotherapist with the Whitford Thomas Group here in Tampa, Florida here to discuss the signs and symptoms of depression. When we talk about depression, it's important before we get into the signs and symptoms to look at what creates depression. I think most people if you ask them what creates depression would tend to tell you that it's external factors that cause one to feel depressed. Interestingly the perpetrator of depression is ourselves in the form of our thinking. And thinking drives feelings and behaviors. So if you don't like how you feel, you don't like what you do, you look at the thinking as driving that. The feeling that we're discussing today is depression and so the thinking tends to drive that state of depression. The thinking we get most concerned about is the thinking that's illogical, irrational, fictional thinking because it tends to produce a fairly severe state and tends to sustain it over time. So what are some of these symptoms of depression? I think most people are fairly familiar with the symptoms and signs of depression but certainly a loss of interest in pleasurable activities. For some, a loss of libido or sex drive. Depression often times will create this sense of helplessness or hopelessness. Helplessness, there's not anything I can do about changing the things in my life, hopelessness is that it will never get any better. Other signs and symptoms of depression can be sleep disorders in the form of sleep disturbance where you either can get to sleep but you don't tend to sleep well or what is kind of insomnia at times, or that you tend to sleep all the time in more so kind of an avoidance. Some people have trouble eating, some people eat all the time. Drinking is another behavior that often times we see with depression. Depression is a sense of fatigue, tiredness, lack of energy, poor concentration, those are all kind of the various different signs and symptoms of depression. But understand that everybody experiences depression differently in not just severity but length of time that they experience depression. One shoe doesn't fit all here. Well hopefully this information I provided you regarding the signs and symptoms of depression has been helpful. From sunny Tampa, Florida, I'm Dr. David Thomas."