Depression: What are the psychic symptoms and how do you recognize depressive sadness?

The sadness of a depressed person has the following characteristics:

• It succeeds a state of gloom,
• It permeates the perception of the present, the past and the future,
• It engenders an inability to experience pleasure (or anhedonia),
• It can be compared to that of a person who has gone through the bereavement of a loved one: the world seems empty, nothing can have enough interest to alleviate this painful situation, the future bears neither project nor hope ,
• Boredom, monotony but also moral pain also characterize this sadness. It is often associated with suicidal thoughts because the future looks hopeless for a depressed person.

The sadness of a depressed person is a real moral pain that engenders deep suffering. This should be considered adequate enough as a symptom to consult, his attending physician, a psychiatrist or a therapist trained in accompanying depression. Doctors will be the ones who will decide, with the patient, whether or not to take antidepressant or anxiolytic drugs.

Depression: what are the somatic signs?

The main somatic signs of depression are:

• Weight loss related to anorexia, loss of taste, feeling of oppression in the throat.
• Sleep disorders: sleepless insomnia, nighttime awakening with nightmares, late night insomnia often associated with more serious suicidal thoughts. Hypersomnia is another form of sleep disorder: the patient finds refuge in a sleep that has lost its restorative value hence the sensation of fatigue upon awakening.
• Libido disorders: decreased sexual appetite, impotence or frigidity.
• Digestive disorders: diarrhea or constipation, anorexia, gastralgia, saburral state of the digestive tract.
• Cardiovascular disorders: palpitations, flushing, hypotension and bradycardia in severe forms.