 So depression is the most common mental health condition that is leading globally currently. I am Dr. Varneshree Bir. I am a consultant psychiatrist from Manipal Hospital, Sarjapura Road. I am here to answer your question about depression today. Depression can affect any age group, including children. It can be adolescents, adults and old age group as well. Most of the parents do ask me, is my child affected with depression? Can they get depression as well? Because they do say that children are not actually stressed. They do not have any responsibility to take care of. Why are they stressed? But the answer is yes. Children can also get affected with depression. It is most commonly seen. It can be due to different causes. It can be because of any stress that they are going through in their school. It can be about their academics, that is about their studies. They can be multiple factors into it. Risk factors include genetic factors like your parents or someone in the close relatives in the family is having depression. Then the chances of you getting depression would be very high. And most commonly chronic stress, that is nothing but long-standing stress. Every day there is a lot of stress that you are dealing with. It can be something that is related to your work life. It can be things like that is related to your personal life or it can be relationship stress. You are dealing with it since a very long period of time. Grief. Grief is one of the most common causes. Grieving can be something like secondary to any major loss. It can be death in the family or of the loud ones. It can be a major loss like in the finances or in the business. It can be loss in any other aspects of it. And trauma. Trauma includes like it can be a major accident like a road traffic accident or it can be other forms of trauma that you do have gone through in terms of loss again. Before visiting the doctor for depression you will have to understand that it's just not about feeling sad for a day or two. It is just not about feeling sad of some event that would have occurred. You will have to wait to experience this low mood feeling very sad maybe throughout the day and for a significant amount of time. It can be for weeks together. So that does not mean that some has to wait for months together to see a doctor. The answer is a no. One has to always understand once they start experiencing the symptoms like low mood, lack of interest in doing any of the activities there is lack of motivation. No matter what you do like exercise yoga or seeking a help from the family or from friends. I think so that is the time where you will have to see the doctor and get that help immediately. To manage the symptoms I think most importantly one has to firstly meet the doctor or a therapist. Follow the instructions whatever has been given by a doctor. It can be about taking your medications regularly. It can be about taking your therapies regularly making sure that you're regular on all of this so that you do not miss a dose because if you miss a dose there's not going to be continuity in the treatment or in taking the medications and there are a certain other most important factors to manage the symptoms that is called as self-help. Take a good self-care in terms of sleeping well, eating well and also physical health becomes very important in terms of exercising doing a yoga. So did you know that naturally doing exercises in the morning or any time of the day would help us to stay relaxed and calm? I think every day your routine has to be added with something like exercise. Exercise can be in any form it can be walking, any form of this has to be added to the routine. Last but not the least to manage your symptoms you need to seek help from your friends and family as well. You'll have to start interacting with them, build a social circle around you. These are the factors that helps you to manage the symptoms.