people often use the terms depression and sadness interchangeably however these two terms represent
very different human experiences and in today's video we're going to be
talking about the differences between depression and sadness
hi everyone i have a question for you how would you know if you were feeling sad
or if you had depression we often think about sadness and depression as the same thing
but are they the reality is there is so much more to depression than just a feeling of sadness
and disappointment and so what we're going to be talking about in today's video
is some of the key differences between sadness and depression
and how to tell them apart but before i get into that just a couple of disclaimers to go over
i'm a registered psychologist in the province of british columbia canada
and this video is for informational purposes only it is not intended as a substitute or replacement
for advice from your doctor or mental health professional now with those things out of the way
let's start talking about the difference between sadness and depression now if you're a sports fan
you've probably had an experience like this where your favorite team fights through the playoffs
to make it to the championship game and you get really excited and hopeful for your team to win
but then in the deciding game they come up just short and they lose
think about how you would feel there would be such a sense of disappointment or sadness and regret
and oftentimes people will describe how they're feeling in that situation
as i'm so depressed because my team lost the big game you see the term depression has kind
of become co-opted to now describe a sense of disappointment and sadness but just because we
use the term that way that doesn't mean that's what the term depression actually means
depression is a much deeper insidious psychological condition and emotional state
that's subjectively much different than than sadness you might feel when your favorite sports
team loses for example you've probably had that sense that the term depression seems to carry
more weight a greater sense of darkness behind it than the term sadness but you've probably
never really thought about how depression and sadness actually differ from one another now
one of the first key differences to understand is that sadness is an emotion whereas depression
is a clinical condition associated with a specific set of symptoms and criteria sadness is a basic
human emotion everyone knows what it feels like to be sad we experience sadness from very early on
in our lives and the thing is and the thing we often don't think about sadness is that
like every emotional state sadness can serve a very useful and beneficial purpose
the emotion of sadness activates us to seek out support or care from other people
when we experience a loss or a disappointment and it's that seeking out that support
that then can allow people to provide us with encouragement and comfort
so in that sense sadness is actually a very healthy and helpful human emotion
depression on the other hand is a psychological condition associated with a specific
set of diagnostic criteria it's much more than just the subjective state of feeling sad the
clinical condition of depression is associated with nine core symptoms of which a person
needs to be experiencing at least five of those symptoms on a daily basis for at least two weeks
and so the nine core symptoms of depression are feeling sad depressed or empty it's what most
people think of with depression it also includes having lost interest or pleasure in almost all
of your usual activities significant changes in appetite either a loss of appetite or eating more
sleep difficulties either insomnia or sleeping too much feeling agitated physically restless or
the opposite moving slowly talking slowly like almost like you're moving in water
uh fatigue loss of energy being easily worn out feelings of worthlessness or excessive
and inappropriate guilt cognitive difficulties thinking difficulties like difficulties with
concentration short-term memory problems with indecisiveness those types of things
and finally thoughts of death or thoughts of suicide so you see there's so much
more to depression than just feeling sad it's so much deeper and bigger than that
now in fact it's it's even possible to be depressed without feeling sad so if you have
five of those symptoms and sadness isn't one of them you can still meet criteria for depression
um now another big difference between sadness and depression is that sadness is a temporary change
in mood a specific reaction whereas depression is an abnormal general state that a person
experiences so sadness is usually a response to something that happens my girlfriend broke up
with me my favorite team lost the championship game i got a bad performance review at work
sadness in these types of situations is perfectly normal there's nothing
pathological uh or problematic or strange about that
but in depression the sadness that feeling of sadness or emptiness applies to everything we feel
sad about everything or we feel empty about everything it doesn't require
a difficult event a difficult situation or an experience of loss we can feel depressed
even in the absence of sadness triggers oftentimes i'll have clients comment to me that everything in
their life is going fine and they have no reason to feel depressed but they still feel depressed um
and so this then becomes something else that they then beat themselves up
about that they have nothing to feel depressed about but they still feel depressed and
then they beat themselves up for feeling depressed which just makes them feel worse
now for these people life may be going objectively fine but subjectively the person can't shake
the feeling of depression you see depression engulfs all activities and events
in a person's life positive things happening neutral things setbacks they're all met with
the same general sense of emptiness a lack of enthusiasm and feeling of blah
it's like there becomes a disconnect between what's going on in the emotional state of the
person they feel depressed no matter what seems to be going on around them
now another key difference is that sadness tends to be a brief time limited emotional state
whereas depression can persist much longer so sadness is an emotional state that it comes and
goes it's not persistent and it doesn't often feel like a person is trapped in it sadness can last
as little as a few hours but usually decreases even just a little as we get distracted with
other things going on even during periods of sadness there are moments when a person
feels okay they're able to laugh at a funny movie or enjoy a fun activity
with a friend that feeling of sadness fades with time whereas depression is different it lasts much
longer and it's much more pervasive throughout a person's day there's a lot less waxing and
waning of the depression feelings but more of a persistent feeling of depression and emptiness
the person isn't able to just snap out of the feeling of depression watching a funny movie or
spending time with friends might have very little effect on the depression feelings in those moments
a person can go weeks and months feeling this way
depression wears a person out it makes it difficult to live life as usual
and finally sadness as an emotional state is subjective it's an internal state that you
feel and you determine if you're sad or not there's no objective way of measuring sadness
it's how you feel now depression although it has a number of subjective components to it
also has some objective signs and symptoms that keep that can be measured and assessed
so sure the feelings of depression sadness emptiness these are all internal and
subjective but there are a number of other aspects of depression that can be evaluated
and assessed things like sleep difficulties or appetite problems energy level levels of fatigue
how much of the participant is engaging in activities that they enjoy doing
assessing a general sense of the person's activity level more generally their ability to engage in
social interactions and cognitive functioning things like concentration and memory these are
all factors that can be observed evaluated and sometimes measured so while sadness is kind of
this ethereal emotional state that can only be felt by the person experiencing it depression
is something that can be much more apparent to other people if they know what to look for
so i hope that gives you a better sense of some of the differences between depression
and sadness and although they're often thought of as the same thing
they're actually quite different from a from one another and i think part of this confusion that
part of this confusion between these two terms comes from the way we tend to be using clinical
language like depression to describe normal human experiences like sadness so by understanding some
of the differences between sadness and depression i hope it gives you a better sense of some of the
differences between normal emotional states when we experience a loss or a disappointment
which is what happens when we feel sadness versus pathological and impairing states like depression
so i'd love to hear your thoughts or ideas or questions about this so
please leave me some comments in the comment section down below if you've been enjoying my
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thank you for making it all the way to the end of this video and i will see you in the next one