DEPRESSION is a disease and its awareness is the call of the day. A depressed patient goes through severe misery of ‘uncontrollable thoughts’; these can also be suicidal thoughts.

Doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists tend to give sleeping pills or other related medicines that put patients to sleep. They tend to believe that if there is no consciousness, there would be no depressive thoughts.

Ultimately high potency medicines affect one’s nervous system.

Depression patients are not mentally challenged but treating their difficultly improperly makes them one. Depression patients are not always depressed throughout their entire lives. They live normal lives but can again get into this misery after a period depending on their circumstances.

Getting out of depression and handling it is not in the control of the depressed person. A depression patient needs nothing more than mere understanding. No one is depressed by choice, it is not self-created tension. It is a sickness which needs professional help and effective medicines and counselling along with an understanding of the loved ones.

Medicines make 40 per cent of healing but the circumstances one lives in and the people with whom one interacts with play the rest of the part.

Depressed people need to be listened to and a tolerance in their mood fluctuation and behaviour. They deal with low-mood, feeling of worthlessness, low-esteem, disappointment, social cut-off, anxiety, restlessness, guilt, sadness because this is the stage where they need us the most.

Depression takes away the hope of living and interest in activities. Bring them back to life for ‘love heals faster than medicine’.

FATIMA ZAHRA BUKHARI
Lahore