Each one of us feels miserable or sad sometimes, but this sort of feeling should be there only for a few minutes or hours. After sometimes, we should be able to enjoy the things around us without worrying. On the other hand, if this type of feeling is disturbing you most of the time and even prevent you from concentrating on things, you may have depression. When there is depression, you might not be able to hang out with your friends and family members or may not be in a position to do well in your school or work. In other words, you will lose interest in everything around you. You might experience that there is a reduction in the level of your self esteem. Now, let us dwell into some details about depression:
Depression
This condition generally ranges in seriousness from minor and temporary episodes of worries to severe or major and persistent worries. For describing the major depression, the term used by health care providers is ‘clinical depression’.
Major depression
This is otherwise called as ‘Major Depressive Disorder’ as well. Some of the symptoms of this condition include recurring thought about death and suicide, loss of concentration and low energy or fatigue almost every day, etc.…. It can bring about several effects on people and finally, it will affect their self esteem to a great extent.
Minor depression
This condition is otherwise called as ‘Minor Depressive Disorder’. It is a mood disorder that does not meet the full criteria of the major disorder, but a minimum of two of the symptoms for the above-case will be present in this case as well.
Effect of depression on self esteem
Even though, minor depression when rightly treated will not disturb the self esteem of people, major depression can surely bring about an impact on the self-confidence and esteem.
It has been found that people at their puberty period with depression are getting affected the most. Even though, they have just minor depression, their self esteem gets affected. But, this should not happen. If you are the parent of a teenage child and are finding the following symptoms in your child, he/she might be having depression:
Behavioral traits
If there is an increase in the level of anger and the resulting violence in him, he might be manifesting himself with these behaviors just because he is lacking self esteem. He might get upset for smaller things and start shouting at you. When this type of behavior can be seen in some children, some of them will completely withdraw themselves and will stop communicating with the family members.
Self-harm and suicide tendencies
These are extreme symptoms and depression and it is better to take them to a psychologist, if your son begins to talk too much about suicide or death. Some of them show reckless behavior like driving fast or by harming themselves.
To sum up, depression and self-esteem are interrelated to each other. If you are experiencing frequent sadness, it is better to consult your health care provider to protect yourself from your self esteem getting affected.