Living with Depression and Anxiety

As many years go by, depression and anxiety have truly reached the surface than it did back in the 1950's. We are all so exposed to a whole lot more in this generation and traumatized by events, or sadly, are simply born with either one or both of these mental health disorders.
While there can be many causes of both depression and anxiety, let's dive into the most common causes of these two mental illnesses. Beginning with depression, although there are various reasons, the most common causes are traumas, chemical imbalances or drugs. People who have witnessed or was a victim of a traumatizing event, could affect their whole life causing many flashbacks and sadness. A chemical imbalance is when there are not enough or more than enough of a chemical in your brain titled neurotransmitters. This can be treated with the right medications which takes about four to six weeks to get going and begin doing some justice to your mentality. Lastly, drugs can play a big role causing this feeling, but there is no certain drug exactly that causes depression because it is almost impossible to list the amount of drugs that is capable of doing so. The continuance and discontinuance of drugs may cause various symptoms of depression.

Anxiety has many different common causes like the environmental aspects of someone's life, genetics or withdrawal. Living in an environment that is toxic, unsafe or unorganized, can cause many people anxiety. This disorder may be simply passed down from generation to generation but some are most likely to be exposed to it with the right trigger. Due to medications being given by doctors to help yourself and the problems you may have, the misuse of medication, side effects or taking them only when necessary could have a huge toll on your body and very rarely, depending on the medication, cause anxiety. As stated before in the last paragraph, a chemical imbalance and the withdrawal of drugs or alcohol can cause anxiety as well.

Moving onto the different types of depression, there are various amounts of names diagnosed to different people, but only some will be addressed. Major depressive disorder, well known as clinical depression, is often diagnosed when people are feeling depressed most of the time, have lack of concentration, thinking about death or possibly even suicide, lack of appetite or too much appetite, no energy, or when your routine in sleeping has changed drastically. Bipolar disorder is a mood disorder that affects either your emotions or body, physically. Some symptoms may include insomnia, body aches or pain, anxiety, unable to keep organized or make decisions, and even feeling incompetent. This disorder has a higher risk of suicidal thoughts and suicide. Seasonal affective disorder usually only occurs when the weather changes in a certain season. While the weather makes its changes, people experience changes too, in weight, sleep and emotion. This is caused because there is a disruption in the normal circadian rhythm that occurs in your body. Depending on the amount of light that is able to enter the eye, this is known to impact the pattern in the body. There are several more undiscussed types of depression, these are the most common.

Anxiety also has various names and different types of ways on how it appears. Generalized anxiety disorder is diagnosed when a person is feeling anxious over many things or for no reason, more than five to six days of the week, for over six months. People are usually worried about school, work, family or friends but GAD disturbs how people act and think about everything. A lot of people who are affected by this, worry more about things than necessary. For example, some may see washing the dishes as an easy task, but it is much more stressful and harder to perform when you have generalized anxiety disorder because it begins to consume your brain and body with anxiousness and an uneasy feeling.

Although there are many reasons that these two things occur, there are several ways to help treat it.

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