 Depression is more than just feeling low or having a bad day. I am Dr. Varnishree. I am a consultant psychiatrist from Manipal Hospital, Sarjapura Road. I am here to talk about depression today. Depression is the most common mental health condition that we see day in and day out. It affects one's mood or their emotions and it affects the behaviour, the way they behave and the ability to function in day-to-day activities that can be in the personal aspects in the social life and in your working life as well where day-to-day activities would become very difficult to do. Causes of depression can be something like biological that's very basic if someone in the family like your mother or father has an history of a depression then the chances of a child so getting it is going to be a little more. And then comes the other factors like upbringing since the childhood where it has been very sensitive towards the criticism and then the other factors most importantly I think the stress matters the most the environmental factors around you whether you have a chronic stress in the environment where you're working it can be stress in the family so dealing with this day in and day out can be the causes of the depression so the symptoms of depression include feeling low throughout the day for most of the days for a significant amount of time having lack of interest in the activities that you were doing earlier which you are unable to do now sleeping less or sometimes sleeping more appetite is going to go down weight loss or sometimes binge eating can be seen as well lack of focus or concentration lack of motivation mostly not being able to wake up in the morning do most of the activities like brushing bathing having lack of interest in any of these day-to-day activities when the when the depression becomes a little severe so when it moves towards the severity so there are some of the negative thoughts like feeling worthless having no hopes about the future at all when we say the depression is very severe some might have the thoughts of self-harm as well or suicidal ideations or thoughts is what we call it as diagnosis of depression can be done once you reach for help or you reach a mental health expert it can be a therapist or it can be a doctor as well one can be seen experiencing the symptoms of depression like feeling low lack of interest in doing any of the activities so one has to always reach out to help and then your doctor is going to ask you a couple of questions like how have you been feeling since maybe since a month or since two months or since few weeks and how are your activities that is your daily activities that is going ahead so it can be like how is your work life how has been your sleep and appetite so there has to be a couple of questions which your doctor asks you so based on your answers to them we do analyze and we evaluate you after the screening so we'll be able to tell you how to go about by the treatment of the depression I get a lot of questions from my patient has to whether the depression is treatable or not and the answer is a big yes once a patient reaches the OPD after the screening so we just explain the patient based on the intensity of the depression it can be very mild it can be severe depression so for mild cases where we see the symptoms are a little less not very severe in terms of thoughts of self-harm what we say is going through the therapy therapy is nothing but it will help you to address the stress that you are going through the whole framework of therapy is all about learning how to manage your stress and how to cope up then comes the second line of management wherein we talk about medications or treatment as such even I get a very common question in the OPD from my patients like I think I'll get addicted to these medications if I take it for a very long period of time and my answer is a no this treatment is individually tailored so treatment is not something that we give a medication for a patient for their whole life the answer is no likewise if the symptoms is there for a month or two months is the first time that you have a depression then we give the medication for a period of six months and what do these medications do to you so they help in decreasing the symptoms like low mood lack of motivation it helps you to provide external support in terms of increasing a certain chemicals in your brain which would have gone down during the depression asking for help becomes the most important thing to prevent the depression ask for help it can be a mental health expert it can be a therapist or it can be a doctor as well seeking help is not wrong because it's okay to ask help we understand that there's a lot of stigma when we talk about our mental health in the society but at the end of the day asking for help would prevent its progression into the severe depression