It turns out there really is such a thing as depression

In 2019, Professor Huang Yueqin’s team from Peking University’s Sixth Hospital published an article in The Lancet Psychiatry, reporting the results of China’s third mental illness survey.

The lifetime prevalence rate of depression detected in China is 6.8%. The lifetime prevalence rate means that even if the disease is cured, as long as those who have had the disease in their lifetime are included, the proportion of such people in the sample is 6.8%. In other words, almost one in 16 Chinese people will encounter depression at least once in their lives.

So it is definitely not a rare disease.

What is depression?

There really is such a disease called depression. Rather than being introverted, pretentious, or depressed, it's more like a disease of the brain.

Depression is not a simple mental illness, but a functional disease. There are some changes in the brain, and there are some organic reasons. The most common is that in some parts of the brain, chemicals that cause happiness are low. Activity in the brain areas that make him confident and bold is reduced.

If you can get better through relaxation and traveling, you can't call it depression. It's just a bad mood, a depressive mood.

Depression that is never absent

Although the medical definition of depression has not been clear until recent decades, it does exist with humans. In the earliest myth "The Epic of Gilgamesh", the protagonist has this description: "The sun disappears and it becomes dark. ； Lightning flashed and flames flew. The clouds were low and the rain was pouring. The light disappeared, the fire went out, and everything that fell was reduced to dust and gray stars. ” In "From Worry to Relief: The History of Depression", the author sorts out how "depression" has changed from ancient Greece and Rome to modern times.

In ancient Greece, people believed in the theory of humors. Therefore, people believe that "depressive" people have excessive secretion of melancholic humor in their melancholy bodies. Galen, the court physician in the Roman period, inherited this saying. The dark shadow of black bile covers the area of ​​​​the mind responsible for thinking, so people suffering from "melancholia" will feel scared.

By the end of the 19th century, Emile Kraepelin and Freud had rediscovered depression. Kraepelin used strictly biomedical concepts to classify depression, proposing the category "manic-depressive illness."

Kraepelin's theories laid the foundation for research on depression because he focused so much on observations of the disease.

Depression in China

In 2019, Professor Huang Yueqin from Peking University Sixth Hospital published a research article in The Lancet Psychiatry. The 12-month prevalence rate of depression in China was 3.6%, while the lifetime prevalence rate reached 6.9%. Based on this data, it can be estimated that there are approximately 95 million patients with depression in China.

The most extreme form of depression is suicide. According to data provided by the World Health Organization, suicide is the second leading cause of death in the 15-29 age group. One person commits suicide every 40 seconds around the world, and the number of deaths caused by suicide reaches 800,000 every year. This is far more than war and homicide - but it attracts far less attention than war and homicide. The suicide rate in rural China is significantly higher than that in urban areas, and the suicide rate among rural women is even higher than among men. In the 1990s, the status of rural women was even lower than today. The entire environment was unfriendly to rural women, which resulted in the high suicide rate among rural women.

It is also possible that women's "grievances" in the family are entangled with their emotions. This emotion does not weaken the conflicts in the family, but instead intensifies the conflicts because family members' expectations for relationships are not fulfilled.

How is depression diagnosed?

When we talk about depression, we may just want to express that our clear state is not very good. In fact, the state of a cold is closer to a mild depression.

 When depression is severe, a depressive state is reached. The definition of a depressive state can be equated to a depressive episode, which is characterized by low mood, loss of interest, and lack of pleasure, which lasts for more than two weeks and has an impact on work and life. But depression is a disease that requires professional personnel and procedures to diagnose. Depression only involves depressive episodes, not mania or hypomania.

Therefore, whether to judge whether you are in a bad mood, clear and low, or whether you have really reached the point of depression requires a diagnosis by a professional doctor. Depression can also change the state through self-adjustment ； When it comes to depression, professional doctors need to intervene and intervene in time to avoid irreversible consequences.

Depression that normal people cannot understand

It is difficult for people to understand the despair of patients with depression. It is clear that there is nothing in the world, there are many paths to choose from, and it is not that bad at all. Why do you feel that the world is so painful? Where does the pain come from?

Patients with depression suffer from psychological torture for a long time. You obviously no longer have enough strength to support yourself to move forward. You want to retreat, you want to soften, you want to be cowarded, are you tired? Can I stop fighting then? You have a way out, but you know deep down that that way out will not be accepted by secular values ​​​​and will not be tolerated by your parents.

You can’t even convince yourself that because of decades of education and social influence, your value system has been deeply solidified and cannot be shaken.

Their despair comes from torture, tiredness, and extreme exhaustion.

Therefore, for patients with severe depression, death is not scary, but a relief. Those who say "I am not afraid of death, but still afraid of living" do not have this kind of desperate experience. They are full of prejudice, but they are lucky.

Depression does not simply belong to the category of mental illness. The parasympathetic nerves are always in a tight state due to the long-term stress of mental illness and may collapse at any time. Causes many physical symptoms, such as sleep disorders, insomnia, and persistent insomnia ； Eating disorder, no appetite ； Along with physical symptoms of anxiety, restlessness, gastrointestinal reactions and more. I truly feel that every day seems like a year.

The pain of every minute and every second is incomprehensible to those who have not experienced it. It's not the kind of thing where you just grit your teeth and persevere and get better if you think about it a little bit. At that moment, what they wanted was not chicken soup inspirational articles. They had already been pushing themselves for too long because they were too good. ； What is needed at this moment is a kind of companionship, a kind of letting go of everything, a kind of support that it doesn't matter even if you become the worst and most failed person. I'm so tired, maybe death would be a relief. It’s really a joke that only depressed people understand.

Really, there is such a thing as depression, which makes depressed patients live as if they are dead. Fortunately, this disease can be treated. Not long ago, I watched the Tencent Medical ME Conference, and President Lu Lin of the Sixth Hospital of Peking University had a sharing. He said that the treatment methods for depression are now very mature: drugs, psychotherapy, and physical therapy. Together, 70-80% of patients can get effective relief. Where is the biggest constraint? It’s about awareness – there are still many people who don’t go to the doctor.

In China today, only 20-30% of patients with depression can receive treatment. This figure is 80% in developed countries. The relevant knowledge about depression is currently in its infancy and is gradually becoming more popular. The good news is that more and more people are paying attention to mental health, and a variety of information is spreading knowledge about depression. We learned that the number of patients with depression will exceed the number of cardiovascular diseases, becoming the second largest chronic disease after cancer.

I hope everyone can learn more about and popularize knowledge about depression, and show more care and care to relatives, friends, classmates, colleagues, and neighbors who suffer from depression. It can bring love closer and love further.

(The article comes from the "Youlai Psychology" public account, follow it to get more popular science. )