Depression is a mood disorder. You are in some sort of vicious cycle. You constantly worry, you have a consistent headache, you sleep poorly,... This can have some major consequences on our daily lives. Your life zest reduces and you feel down. Most people therefore see depression as a constant negative mood. This is why we hardly experience any joy anymore. This picture of depression is correct. What most people do not know, however, is that depression entails more than this poor mood. Depression is more complex. Much more complex than we would think at first.
When do we speak of depression?
How does it differ from being down? Depression namely has a much larger impact on the daily life. A depression makes it so that we develop a headache, worry, do not want to leave the house,... Feeling down does not have such a large impact. We use an example to clarify this. Because you are depressed, you no longer visit cafes with friends, while you used to enjoy that in the past. When you feel down, you might not go out as often as you used to, but you still do fun things. It thus goes further than feeling down. With depression you will not do fun things for weeks, sometimes even months. There thus is a clear difference.
You cannot get rid of it
Another element is that the mood and its symptoms do not just go away. It seems like you just cannot get rid of them. It persists for much longer than any earlier sad or negative moments. Because a depression is present to such an extent in our daily lives, it has certain consequences. The depression has more and more of an influence on our daily happenings. To make the previous statement clearer, we use an example. It can be so that you used to enjoy going away with friends. A depression could make it so that you isolate yourself more and more. You no longer want to go away. Your mood therefore stops you from doing things. It stops you from going out with friends. The depression has more and more of an influence on your life. To learn more about what depression entails you are welcome to look at the article: Depression: do you have a depression?
Online self-help
15 Minutes 4 Me developed an online self-help program against depression. You work on yourself for 15 minutes daily at the hand of videos and solution focused questions. These will help you to gain new insights and to learn to deal with frustrations or problems differently. The program was developed by doctors and is a small step and low-budget. The effect of 15 Minutes 4 Me has already been scientifically proven. From research it has become clear that participants are 40% happier after 3 weeks and that stress is reduced by 77%. Because of these reasons, online self-help is a good way to treat minor depressions on your own or can be perfectly combined with therapy.
Test if you are depressed
Before you start with the program, you can test if you are depressed at the hand of our free depression test. You get several statements of which you need to state whether or not they apply to you. Then, you are taken to a page with your scores.
