This is a summary of the Youtube stream by Tanmay Bhat, Kaneez Surkha, Abish Mathew and Dr. Siddharth Warrier.

What do you think when you hear the term depression? A feeling of sadness and unhappiness. Everyone feels low and more importantly everyone’s experience is different. Depression is a medical problem. Although there is a lot to learn in the dimension of depression, there are certain criteria that help in identifying and treating depression. Clinical depression is diagnosed if a person has 5 or more of the 9 undermentioned symptoms for more than 2 weeks.

  • Feel unhappy, sad, or miserable nearly every day
  • Feel helpless, hopeless, or worthless
  • Lose interest in hobbies, friends, and activities that used to give pleasure
  • Don’t sleep well or sleep too much
  • Gain or lose weight without efforts
  • Are constantly tired or have low energy
  • Have a hard time concentrating or making decisions
  • Inability to feel pleasure
  • Losing Focus

You can enter this vicious spiral of depression through any of these symptoms and then one might lead to another. It is very common, 1 in 10 people will have it in their lifetime. But the problem with depression is — there are symptoms and triggers; trauma, stress, hormonal imbalance; but there is no measure and tests.

To understand the roots of depression, we must first understand the primitiveness of the brain — the idea of pleasure and pain. The survival instinct of all the animals is based on reward and punishment. Fear prevents us from doing things that might hurt us while pleasure does otherwise. The core of the brain or the limbic system responds to pleasure and pain. But as we evolve we add layers to our brain. This helps us in making more radical decisions. Furthermore, this complex sense adds wants (pleasure) and likes (happiness) to our emotion system.

Depression is all the same as happiness with something wrong in the circuitry. The happiness circuitry has DorsoLateral Prefrontal Cortex (DLPFC) which is the executive center, for planning and decision making; secondly an area for self awareness, this comprises of Orbitofrontal Cortex (OFC) and Insula and the third component being limbic system which forms the foundation of emotions. OFC and Insula decide who you are as a person and send messages to DLPFC. While the limbic system, on the basis of memories stored in the hippocampus, sets emotions. If these actions, motivations and emotions are symphonized then we feel happiness and if they aren’t in sync then pain — reward and punishment.

While depressed our brain starts to sense punishment more. Certain changes happen in the brain. DLPFC shrink, leading to unwillingness to do things, losing concentration and then developing apathy. Gradually, the hippocampus starts to shrink as well — can’t remember things. All along, during depression we feel threatened. This chronic threat is considered an infection. To address this our body releases cytokines to kill the bacterias and viruses — but there aren’t any. Insula which keeps the statistics of the body is surrounded by cytokines. Once this happens, the body starts to feel sick.

\[Depression\;= \;Sign\,of\,Sickness\;-\;Infection\]

DLPFC is already not doing anything, Insula is surrounded by cytokines and doesn’t give any order. This makes us go down the loop towards a darker dimension. There are Non-pharmacological as well as pharmacological treatments to break this loop. Non-pharmacological includes Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Yoga and Meditation while pharmacological includes medications like serotonin. The healing process also takes place in a loop. But this process might spiral back if there is no one to help you out.

That is why we are taught to be kind to people. Who knows what might trigger someone and lead them down the vicious spiral and drench them in self-loathe, anxiety, stress. Infact, your act of kindness might help the depressed person to be optimistic.

“Ah, kindness. What a simple way to tell another struggling soul that there is love to be found in the world.” ― Alison Malee