Essay about The Psychology of Depression

Submitted By Cobbah1
Words: 1581
Pages: 7

According to world health organization, depression is a common mental health disorder that is manifested in depressed mood, loss of interest or pleasure, feeling of guilt or low self-worth, disturbed sleep or appetite and poor concentration. In society today, people in one way or the other do become depressed. Most people who experience these feelings sometimes consider them to be normal and do not seek for help until it has progressed to the last stage but people need to consider and attend to in other to prevent it. Therefore, marital problems, changes in life circumstance, some negative early life experiences, and low-self-esteem are some factors that contribute to people being depressed. To begin, marital problems do play a role in depression. Most women do become depress because of the problems they have in their marriage. This problem could be a fault of theirs or that of their husbands and this is mostly seen when there is lack of understanding in the family between the two. An article titled “causes of depression: perceptions among people recovering from depression” by Chou-Mei Fu and Kander Parahoo gives example which sheds light on how marital relationship do contribute to depression. It state “my husband believe that the man is the master of the family, he wants me to carry what he wants exactly without my discussion.” (Fu, Parahoo 104). This literary shows lack of communication between the man and his wife which will in probably bring about misunderstanding between them or even the woman will probably start thinking about why her husband do take decision without seeking her opinion first. Also, divorce contributes to people being depressed. A person who has always been happy in his/her marriage will be greatly affected mentally and physically when there is a break up. This will affect the person in a way that, he/she might sometimes want to end his/her life. To support this, an article “Marital happiness and marital stability: consequences for psychological well-being” by Linda j. Waite, Ye Luo and Alisa C. Lewin state “people who were happily married may be devastated by the breakup of their union than people who were unhappily married.” The poem “The Sparkling Bitch,” by Paulina Melville also do help support how marital problems can cause depression in a person’s life. It shows how a wife (Susan) of a wealthy architect becomes so depressed when she is being ignored by her husband. “He had not seen Susan once during the time although they had spoken on phone.” (Melville 373-381). He did not care of how the wife was doing because he was busily focusing on his work meanwhile, his wife (Susan) was depressed and has been starving herself. She was probably feeling that her husband did not care about her well-being and so became redrawn. Therefore marital problem/ relationship are one of the causes of depression. The next factor that contributes to people having depression is some changes in life circumstances. People turn out to be depressed when certain things do change in their lives. It either has a long term or a short term effects on them. Thus, the changes turn to become part of their lives. Examples of these changes are bereavement, changes in social support and separation from children. If a person loses a loved one through death, he/she may become depressed because the person (dead) might have been an influential person or a confidant or even someone who brings some sort of happiness to him/her. So with him/her gone, she feels lonely and feels that she may never get a person like her and that feelings might lead to depression. An article by Lewin, Kim with the tittle “Depression Assessment” published in 2007, does state “An episode of depression may be triggered by life event, such as bereavement, redundancy or relationship problem, with or without existing mild mode.” (Lewin, 43-45). In the poem “A Rose for Emily” (Faulkner, 526-533), the narrator made the readers aware of what Emily, the main