12 Overlooked Early Signs of 'Mental' Depression | How to Know if You Are Depressed

Depression, also referred to as clinical depression, is a mental health condition in which an individual has emotional lowliness, depressed moods, a sense of dejection, and sometimes withdrawal from life.

Depression is a common mental disorder among people from different works of life, gender, and regions. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), about 5% of adults suffer from depression globally. This proportion amounts to roughly 400 million people.

Depression rate varies based on gender, geographical location, and other factors. It is high among women than men and higher among those living on islands over mainlanders.

There are many causes of depression. It can be caused by personal experiences like disappointment, heartbreak, stress, abusive drug use, or social pressure. Depression can also result from certain health conditions. For example, postpartum depression (also known as “baby blues”) affects new mothers after childbirth, causing mood swings and anxiety.

A lot of people suffer from depression without knowing that they have the condition. However, it is better to discover early signs of depression to be able to fight it earlier. Once it is too late, it can lead to loss of life through suicide, ill health, and other negative consequences.

Below are the Early Signs of Depression You Must Look Out To:

1. Withdrawal from people and social activities:

One of the early signs of depression is that you may begin to withdraw from almost all social activities. You begin to isolate yourself from friends and loved ones. Sometimes it becomes annoying to receive calls or even see people chat you up.

Depression can make you find less value in everything around you, including friends, colleagues, and family.

If you were once a very social and easy-going person, then you realize that you have lost interest in everyone around you, it could be that you are beginning to have mental depression.

2. Loss of interest in regular lifestyle: 

Depression leads to a loss of interest in regular activities and lifestyle. This includes lacking appetite, even to your best food. You realize that things you valued so much do not matter anymore. Your favorite sports, movies, games, and even your pets may begin to look uninteresting to you.

Once you are becoming indifferent to regular activities, it is a sign that there is something wrong, and it could be a coming depression.

3. Feeling of emptiness and loneliness: 

A mentally depressed person will feel empty and lonely all the time, even when there are so many people around. 

Emptiness means that you feel blank, desperate, and deserted. You feel like there is a vacuum somewhere in your life, even when you may not be able to figure out what it is.

You can be living with someone, yet you feel like you are living a lonely life. You feel abandoned by everyone. You may begin to misinterpret people’s behavior as a sign that they do not care or love you anymore.

You may feel like you are alone yet you find yourself not active enough to keep people in your life, and not interested in meeting your most valued friends any longer. To win this, learn how to combat the feeling of loneliness.

4. Lack of attentiveness and sense of concentration:

Do you find yourself losing concentration or attentiveness? It could be that you are depressed. This is because depression affects the mind and brain.

While you are busy, your mind is supposed to be on what you are doing at hand. But if there is something wrong with your mental health, you may begin to lose focus and attention. Sometimes you may find yourself doing something else or saying something out of the context of the discussion.

You may also find it hard to listen for a long time. The worst; you may find yourself crossing the road without looking out for oncoming cars, or forgetting that you are steering while driving.

5. Forgetting things too often:

This is easy to know because once you lose concentration, it would be hard to remember your previous tasks. If you are mentally depressed, you may find it hard to remember things. You realize that you forget even the least things. You can be holding something at hand while searching for it somewhere.

You may find yourself standing alone in the center of your room trying to recall what you were about to do next. It is all signs that you need to check yourself, perhaps you have mental depression.

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6.  Becoming hopeless and giving up on life:

Despondency is one of the major signs of early depression. Once you feel hopeless about life and tomorrow, it could be that you have depression. 

Depression makes you pessimistic and tired of everything in life. You begin to give up on life and feel like it is over for you. Your thoughts begin to go dark. You can only imagine Jesus coming today for everything to end or you wish there is a way you can just leave this world.

No healthy person has such feelings. A person with a sound mind is optimistic about tomorrow. That you have given up on life is a sign that something is wrong with you, which results in mental depression.

7. Feeling inferior and unworthy: 

Depression brings a lot of dark thoughts. It makes you feel like you are unworthy and that you are nobody. You feel there is nothing good about you, the world does not need you. You wonder why you had to come to this world when you have no value.

All your mates begin to appear more successful and happier than you. Once people speak down on you, the words become too quick to trigger a sense of inferiority complex. It is a sign that you need help, you are surely depressed.

8. Losing interest in your dreams and life goals:

Besides social activities, depression would make you lose interest in your dreamsand life goals. This is when it can kill your motivation and lead to giving up on life.

What keeps you alive and willing to keep trying is that you have hope, aspirations, and life goals.

Depression does not only make you lose focus in regular activities but also on those precious goals of life you have set for years. Once your depression reaches this level, you would begin to feel like you have nothing to live for any longer.

9. Getting sad all the time:

Depression makes you sad and moody always. You find yourself having mood swing all the time and getting moody for nothing's sake.

You may lose pleasure in smiling at funny things or cracking jokes. It can reach a level you get annoyed over everything and everyone around you.

10. Always recalling childhood memories and missing the past:

When you have reached a point of feeling lonely all the time and losing pleasure in life, the next feeling you be missing in the past. You begin to miss your childhood self, your old friends, and the best moments you have ever had.

You can begin to think about your late loved ones and feel they would have been around you at this moment. This feeling, among others, can trigger lonely cries, especially at night; or insomnia (sleeplessness).

11. Rise in Negative Addiction and Craving

The feeling of loneliness and emptiness during depression triggers addiction and craving. Such addictions include substance abuse, alcoholism, and even masturbation. 

12. Thinking suicidal:

The extreme stage of depression is having suicidal thoughts. “I have lost interest in my life goals, I am now lonely, I am unworthy, the world does not need you, life has treated me so harshly than everyone else in this world. What else; what am I living for?” 

You would begin to think so darkly that you feel like committing suicide. You begin to admire and compare poisonous drinks, heights, and everything you know can take your life. 

At this stage of mental depression, your life is in danger, and you need serious and urgent help. You need to talk to someone and seek for solution to your depressing self.

Depression begins slowly with the above signs until it gets to an extreme level. Try your best to think and live positively. If you have any of the depressing signs above, do not sit down, seek help immediately. Do not give up on life irrespective of what you find. Every challenge you are facing is temporary and will be over someday.

Note: Only having just one of the signs listed above is not a guarantee that you are depressed. It can result from other factors which may include certain medical disorders such as anxiety. However, experiencing the collective signs of depression provided here could mean one is depressed. Contacting a mental health expert can help you determine your mental health status,