What no one tells you about depression
Ivy Griffin
- There’s a whole range of how depressed a person can be.
a. On one end of the spectrum, people may still go to work or school, spend time with friends and family and keep pursuing their hobbies. However, they find they just don’t care very much. Or their energy is really low. Or it feels like life went gray (remember Pleasantville? Yea, gray like that.)---nothing else changed but everything is less exciting, less interesting, more boring or blah. The people who care about them may have no idea anything is wrong. They keep going along in life as always, but they know things are off. They really want to just feel lighter, more like themselves or more like how they think they could be.
b. At the more extreme end of the spectrum, people may not get out of bed. They may cry all day or lie around and binge on Netflix for days and weeks. They may feel so horrible that they don’t want to live anymore. The more intense depressive symptoms are easier to recognize. They’re also very painful for the people experiencing them and for their loved ones.
- Depression can occur at any age and at any point in life. We’re not immune to depression past a certain point in life, nor are we too naive as kids or teens to become depressed.