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Overview
General feelings of being down are common to everybody. A higher level of feeling depressed is less common but still quite widespread. Clinical depression is much more than simply having a serious case of the blues; depression is a chronic disorder in which even apparently "having it all" fails to lift a person from the very depths of unhappiness. Depression affects every single facet of life but can be exhibited in a vast array of symptoms.
Change
One of the first signs that doctors look for when they consider a diagnosis of clinical depression is a sudden change in the person. Depression usually brings about a transformation that can often be quite dramatic. For instance, a person who is described by everybody as vivacious and bubbly might become withdrawn and shy; a person who never leaves the house without looking like someone who leapt off a magazine cover may suddenly not care anything about her appearance.
Avoiding Gratification
Depression leads not just to a change in a person's habit, but very often brings about an aversion to all sense of pleasure. Gratification is no longer sought; in fact, things that used to gratify a person may be studiously avoided. An avowed sense of loss of pleasure can very often be the first sign that eventually a depressed person will reach the point where they no longer even have the drive to survive. This can lead to suicidal thoughts.
Sadness
Things that used to make a person happy can bring about feelings of sadness. While a depressed person may naturally be expected to get down while watching a sad movie or listening to depressing music, when a person is in the grips of depression even those things that normally might make them happy can bring about feelings of gloom. What is considered a feel-good movie can have the effect of reminding a depressed person that he never seems to be happy about anything and bring on a heavy sense of dread that things will never get back to normal.
Pessimism
In general, a person who becomes clinically depressed was probably never a person described as a Pollyanna; the type of person who always sees the good in everything. It can happen, of course, but in most cases a depressed person will never have been particularly optimistic. Nevertheless, when a person is depressed, she usually becomes quite pessimistic about everything. The news always seems bad and even good news is usually discussed from the perspective of what good may be lacking. Over time most depressed people will become less interested in the world around them.
Fatigue and Boredom
Everybody experiences tiredness and lack of interest in things occasionally, but for a depressed person the problems become chronic. It is difficult to say whether the boredom is caused by the lack of energy or vice versa, but whereas the day used to be a buzz of activity and fascination, depression can be mean days on end spent lying in bed too tired to even turn on the TV or make food.
Sex
Depression can affect the sex drive in one of two ways. The overwhelming majority of depressed people experience some kind of disinterest in sex; very often it can be manifest in a complete and total lack of interest. At the other end of the spectrum are the roughly 25 percent of people dealing with depression who experience a significant spike in their libido. Often the attention given to sex by depressed people becomes a mania and in some cases it exhibits itself in a growing interest in deviant sexual appetites.
Length
The length of time that depression lasts cannot be predictable. While a great many people must deal with depressive episodes throughout their entire lives, others have experienced deep depressions that last a few months or years. While medication has been proven effective in controlling the symptoms of depression, the processes that create depression usually have to go away by themselves; so far, medical research has not been able to determine how they happen.
