School. Exams. And a lot of homework. This is the way of life many students are used to by now. It therefore won't come as a surprise that many students suffer from poor mental health. Especially depression and anxiety. But how many of us actually know what it is? 

 

Depression:

Depression currently affects 3.3% of our population and around 20% of adolescents (16-25 year olds) show symptoms of depression. Due to depression, many people are unable to work full-time or need to take time off work, which, annually, means that our economy loses around £70-100 billion. 

 

Symptoms of Depression:

Depression is organised into three categories: mild, moderate, and severe.

Mild depression means that you have at least 2 of the "core" symptoms that I will list below, and at least 2 of the "associated" symptoms. 

Depression categorised as moderate will mean that you must have at least 2 of the "core" symptoms and four "associated " symptoms. 

And severe depression is where you have at least three of the "core" symptoms and five "associated" symptoms. 

There are 3 "core" symptoms relating to depression:

1. Having a low mood

2. Having low amounts of energy: also called Anergia

3. And not being able to enjoy activities that you would normally enjoy. Which is also called Anhedonia

There are a few "associated" symptoms relating to depression. These are symptoms that could or may not affect you, and are changes that you will see in day-to-day life with depression. 

1. Trouble with concentrating on one activity. Depression may hinder your ability to concentrate on one particular thing. This can often end up as a negative cycle, where your loss of ability to concentrate makes thoughts of you unable to achieve something worse which further makes it harder to concentrate. 

2. Poor memory. Depressed individuals tend to show poor memory regarding positive events, however, why this occurs is still poorly understood but is linked to bias retrieval in the brain towards negative events and the brain failing to encode positive experiences into our memory. 

3. Feelings of worthlessness and self-doubt. This is due to people with depression thinking negatively. The more negatively someone thinks, the less you are able to see everything around you accurately and you tend to believe that you are worse than you actually are. 

4. Reduced appetite. Depression is linked to changes in neurotransmitters which include dopamine and serotonin which play an important role in regulating our appetite, which can play a reason into why people's appetites reduce when they have depression. Stress hormones, which can be increased due to depression, such as cortisol, can suppress appetite and interfere with our digestion. 

5. Sleep disturbance. This means that people with depression can either sleep more or less than normal. This is due to many factors such as disturbances to brain chemistry. When we feel sleepy and when we feel awake are controlled by chemicals in our brain such as serotonin and melatonin, and as mentioned above, depression can affect the production and release of hormones in the brain. 

6. Sexual dysfunction. This is also caused by many factors which can range from interpersonal reasons (communication problems and decreased intimacy), fatigue from depression (can make it harder to engage in sexual activity), the antidepressants (can have side effects that affect sexual function and decrease libido). 

7. Thoughts of self-harm and suicide. 

 

Treating depression:

Cases of depression are very different between each person and so there are many ways that doctors go about to try and improve a person's mental health. When trying to improve a person's mental health, they need to take into account the severity of depression (mild, moderate or severe) and whether the person has any existing medical conditions and, of course, the individual's preference. 

1. Reassurance: making sure that the doctor explains everything to the patient and that they do not feel alone during this process is one of the most important things they can do. 

2. Medications: Antidepressant medication can help alleviate the symptoms (not cure!) by balancing the chemicals in the brain that affect mood. There are many types of Antidepressants available such as SNRIs (serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors), SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), MAOIs (monoamine oxidase inhibitors), and TCAs (tricyclic antidepressants). 

3. CBT: Cognitive behavioural therapy. Its objective is to identify some of the thoughts and processes that drive someone's depression. Formal CBT involves the patient talking to someone about depression. 

There are many other treatment methods such as ECT, TMS, psychotherapy and something as little as lifestyle changes. This vast spectrum of treatments hopefully shows you how diverse each case of depression is and how it is hardly possible to cure it. Most medications to do with mental health are to alleviate the symptoms rather than cure it, as the only treatment that is actually able to cure someone from poor mental health is the person's own mentality and thoughts. 

 

Anxiety:

"Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained." - Arthur Somers Roche

At its worst, anxiety can be seen through "panic attacks". Where a person may suffer from palpitations, sweating, dizziness, fainting, increased or reduced muscle tension and negative thoughts and feelings of "impending doom". 

Symptoms of Anxiety:

1. Low mood

2. Poor sleep / Sleep disturbances

3. Inability to concentrate 

4. Feelings of worthlessness and self-doubt

5. Feelings of "impending doom". 

This all looks very similar to depression, and often they occur together. And the treatment options for both are very similar.