It’s alright...everything will be okay. You just think too much

Joyce Paveine
“...you think too much.”...you think too much” the four words rang out inside the echolalia of a tiny head. They poured in remarks of tranquillity with hopes to steady a storm which is beyond the reach of its own calm.  A point of time where they could feed you no more with words that you had been dying to feast on initially at this rate where you have lost all the motivation to physically and mentally establish your own state of mind to differentiate between what sleeping and being awake is.
Have you ever felt tired after sleeping for 13 hours in 24hrs a day? Is it really just because you are tired? No. Because for a person who is going through depression, Sleep is an escape from reality. You are drained, fatigued and just being told that you think too much, that being sad is very normal but it isn’t how a depressed person sees the world.” Depression” is an overused term which is taken as a form of sadness. But what the world needs to know is ‘Sadness’ is an emotion whereas ‘Depression’  is an illness. Most people take depression lightly by saying that it emotionally makes them drown into a pool of tears, be it a small incident or because they are traumatised with ‘little thoughts’ without ever realising that it was not just crying, perhaps crying is a reaction to depression, perhaps crying was an escape from the grasp of mental abuse, perhaps it makes them feel better even though it would mentally drain their world of viewing their particular interest.
The most disturbing facts about a person being depressed are that they tend to shut themselves out from the social norms of life and have the tendencies to blame themselves about the silliest things that someone else wouldn’t consider as something worth a thought for. We never know what is going on inside the mind of a depressed person;  “people will be better without me”, they feel that their existence is lower than a snake’s belly. Rather depression is a maladaptive hibernation reflex triggered by learned helplessness.
I used to love art, but would you consider it normal if I say that it doesn’t interest or matter to me anymore? for at that point of time in my life, it was like I felt so much that I couldn’t feel anything at all. I felt my brain was shrinking at a point where I don’t know what I really wanted, someone would say something but I do not react to it or maybe react after a few seconds after reconstructing my own ideology of how worthless my existence is to the people around me apparently because all I have ever felt was being blamed or being cast out from exploring my own individual freedom of experiencing the depths and heights of what the world offers me. We have all experienced the pain of being misunderstood, a word misunderstood, then it robs us of the pleasure to live, of life, of interests;  but I have realised that we can never believe our own judgement while being depressed.
The WHO estimates that more than 300 million people worldwide suffer from depression. It’s also the world’s leading cause of disability. Depression may be difficult to spot in older adults. Symptoms like unexplained memory loss, sleeping disorder, or withdrawal from social activities could be signs of early Alzheimer’s disease. Depression is said to be most common in ages between 18 to 25 years and women are twice as likely as men to have had a depressive episode, according to the World Health Organization (WHO)Trusted Source.  
The analysis which is based on existing studies that looked at more than 3.5 million people in more than 90 countries, confirmed that depression affects far more females than males. A study, published by the journal Psychological Bulletin, convinces doubters that depression largely, but not entirely, affects females, says co-author Janet Hyde, a professor of psychology gender and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In fact, some studies suggested that though both men and women experienced similar levels of stress, gender differences, no doubt abounds socially and domestically. The greater effect as a sequence from particular crisis encircling the number of incidents that takes place on women was a result of their greater salience to women’s role identities. This suggests that the role strain effect is a consequence of differential sensitivity to events, as a result of role differences, rather than women experiencing more of its events. In fact,  the data presented by Meltzer et al. (1995), there is a strong suggestion that substance abuse is more distinguishingly seen among young men than those of which are single or separated, while the gender differences in depression are at their greatest among those who are married (Bebbington, 1996). Overall, women had an 80% greater risk of an episode of depression following per cents (Nazroo et al., 1998).
This risk was more than five times considerable for women to following situations involving children, housing and in reproduction. There were no gender differences in risk for crises or situation involving finances, work and in marriage.
It has also been estimated that 16.2 million adults in the United States, or 6.7percent of American adults, have had at least one major depressive episode in an allotted year. According to the American Psychological Association(APA), about 10 to 15 per cent of U.S. women have had a depressive outbreak within three months of childbirth.
According to the Times of India, Depression is ranked by WHO as the single largest contributor to global disability. It is also the major contributor to suicide deaths. Worldwide, depression increased by 18 per cent from 2005 to 2015. The WHO has also provided further information that India is the sixth most depressed country with a suicide rate of 10.9 for every one lakh people, suicide has been the biggest causes of deaths in the age group of 15-24yrs. The average suicide rate in India is 10.9 per cent for every lakh people and almost 80% people who are diagnosed with mental sickness are not treated and are left with 150 million more who requires access to therapy and this has been estimated to increase  20% by 2020(TOI).
WHO estimates that one in four people in the world will be affected by mental or neurological disorders at some point in their lives. And this is true because approximately around 450 million people currently suffer from such conditions according to various studies including NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH(NIMH) placing mental disorders among the leading causes of ill-health and as a form of disability worldwide. Globally, it has been estimated that the total number of people with depression exceed 300 million in 2015, which is equivalent to 4.3% of the world’s population. We should be well aware by now that Depression is ranked as the single largest contributor to global-wide disability. At its worst, depression can lead to suicidal thoughts which have consequently taken the lives of many people around the world who were left untreated and labelled as a kind of sad normalcy. Over approximately 800 000 people lost their lives due to suicide every year and suicide attempt continues with the number of depression towering in medical health care line. Suicide is, in fact,  the second leading cause of death in 15-29-year-olds.
Many of the cases of depression or dysthemia between the age of 12- 25 yrs occurs because of the expectations relatives and family has on that particular person. I have a friend who excels in both studies and performing arts, it was saddening to learn that her parents do not encourage much of her other extra curriculum activities where she has achieved much recognition and compensated for apart from her studies which later on deprived her interests affecting both her mental ways to cope up with her studies and her other interests. Depression for her was more about giving her an identity to construct a future inside a puzzle box, compelling her to live a life of someone else’s, something which is not herself, depersonalisation, which was already her treacherous foe.
To be contd