Hello I'm Dr Beth Colby. I'm a psychiatrist in London. I qualified as a
doctor in 1991, having studied medicine at the University of Bristol. I then did
my General Practice training and gained the Membership of the Royal College of
General Practitioners in 1996. I followed that by my training in psychiatry and
became a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 2001. Today I'd like to
talk to you about the 10 main symptoms of depression, the first being that of
low mood. People with depressed mood feel low, feel very low, and nothing seems to
alter that, even nice things happening, funny things happening; and low mood may
be independent of personal circumstances. The second symptom is that of decreased
enjoyment and pleasure in activities that somebody would normally find
pleasurable. The word for this is anhedonia. People may normally enjoy playing
football or watching cricket or sewing or having coffee with friends, playing
darts at the pub, studying modern languages. Whatever it is, these things no
longer give pleasure to the individual, and therefore they don't do them. The
third symptom is that of lack of energy. People feel very tired, tired all the
time and even resting doesn't increase people's energy. They find that
everything is a chore, a struggle, and things that normally somebody would do
very easily make them increasingly fatigued, and therefore they do fewer
activities. The fourth symptom is that of altered concentration and attention.
People don't seem to be able to concentrate so well, even if it's
reading a book or watching the television, and of course things that
require more mental agility. This may lead to people thinking they have
problems with their memory, because they haven't attended to information. People
may have to keep reading the same paragraph of the book, because it hasn't
gone into their head. The fifth symptom is that of
low self-esteem and low self-worth and self-confidence.
People sort of beat themselves up; they think they're not very good, they don't
like themselves, and this leads to poor self-confidence. People don't like
facing other people; things that they would normally do very competently, they
don't have the confidence in doing anymore. The sixth symptom is that of
feelings of guilt and unworthiness. People may feel excessively guilty for
an action they did many years before or more recently, or just feel guilty
generally, for being alive, thinking there might be a waste of space, why are they
here? They may feel unworthy, unworthy of their family's love or unworthy of
anything, really. The next symptom is that of bleak and pessimistic views of the
future. People sort of look through glasses that are black and dark, and they
can't see any way that their situation will change in that their mood won't
improve, and they'll feel like that forever.
They have no hope that anything will change. The
eighth symptom is that of thoughts and acts of self-harm and suicide. People
feel so low, so awful, that they harm themselves, or they even think of killing
themselves. First of all it may be that people don't think that they're they
think they're a bad person and then their life is not worth living, that
people won't care if they've gone; that they're a burden on people. They may then
go on to think about ways they can kill themselves, methods, and then plan things
for the future, like their funeral, writing a will, get their financial affairs in
order for when they die; write a letter to explain what they've done and to say
sorry; and people who feel like that don't feel as though they're being
selfish, but that people will be glad when they're gone, that nobody will care
anyway, that people are better off without
them. If you ever have feelings like this, please, please see your General
Practitioner as a matter of urgency. There is help out there, and things
will improve for you. The ninth symptom is that of altered sleep. People may have
increased sleep, and sleep for long periods, even during the day as well as
the night, but not feel refreshed by it, still tired when they wake up. Other
people may have altered sleep and that is diminished. They may not be able to get
to sleep till late; their sleep may be interrupted during the night, and they may wake up early.
Classically, in depression, this is about five o'clock in the morning; and once again,
they don't feel refreshed after the little sleep that they've had; and people may also have bad dreams
or nightmares when they're feeling depressed. The tenth and last symptom is
that of altered appetite. Some people may have a really poor appetite and not enjoy their food and
therefore eat less and lose weight. Other people may have an increased appetite or just eat more
anyway to try and feel a bit better, so-called comfort eating, and they may put on weight.
so called comfort eating, and they may put on weight.