Though our greatest worry is the depressed teenager, children of all ages can be depressed. Depression is more than the kind of short-term sadness we all experience. True depression immobilizes, dulls interest and turns out the light at the end of the tunnel.
The depressed five-year-old becomes unhappy, quiet and less animated, usually in response to [...]

The person suffering from depression is not the only one who is affected by this disease. Everyone who comes into contact with someone who is even moderately depressed will feel the impact. There are three main problems to consider in coping with a person, either at work or at home, who is in the throes [...]

It is not uncommon for someone who is depressed to find that their eating patterns go haywire. There is no one partic­ular eating pattern associated with depression, although a severely depressed person will tend not to eat much at all and will subsequently lose a lot of weight. Those with mild or moderate symptoms might [...]

There are broadly two categories of depression: the reactive type, which comes on as a result of some external circum­stance, such as the death of someone close to you, losing a job, divorce or chronic illness; and clinical depression, which is depression that is mainly biological in origin. The origins of clinical depression are still [...]

The relationship between addiction to alcohol and drugs and depression is a complex one. Studies have shown, for instance, that people suffering from depression are about twice as likely to be alcohol-dependent – i.e. if you don’t consume a regular supply of alcohol you suffer from symp­toms of withdrawal – than the rest of the [...]

Many people, when they do address their diet and begin to eat more healthily, lump all fats together as health villains that will make them overweight, with the result that they cut down on the fats that are actually good for them. The Western world has become almost allergic to the concept of fat in [...]

Loss in early childhood changes the way we think and feel about ourselves, but loss is also a reality for everyone. We all experience loss at some time in our life, and so it acts as a social, reactive trigger for depression. The problem is that we all try to attach permanence to our surroundings [...]