Depression: A perilous enigma
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Depression: A perilous enigma

Managing the stress level or any sort of problem in our relationship, be it a casual fight in a family or as big as thoughts of ending one’s life, any triggering thought can be vulnerable at times

Post by on Saturday, March 19, 2022

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Depression is a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness. Before going any further, it is essential to differentiate grief from depression. Depression can be a little different from grief where one may have a problem but one can snap out of it after some period of time but the feeling of sadness that remains with you for a long period of time is depression. It may include the consistent feeling of sadness, anger outbursts, loss of interest, sleeping disturbances, and feeling of worthlessness. A complex set and intricate combination of emotional and functional challenges can urge a person to be at the verge of ending its life (leading to death) or near-dead condition. This broad range of experiences may not be that easy to detect at first instance or it won’t be wrong to say that until and unless a person is deeply braided into it without knowing the reason and struggling with the thoughts, nobody would realize the seriousness of the condition.

Continuous stress and poor management of work load can be one of the major reasons for developing depression in young generation. Managing the stress level or any sort of problem in our relationship, be it a casual fight in a family or as big as thoughts of ending one’s life, any triggering thought can be vulnerable at times. A person in depression has a sensation of being afraid all the time but the worst thing is not knowing the reason behind it. It becomes painful to be alive in a situation like this where we try to annihilate the relationships with the mercurial thoughts of finding flaws in love.

Objectively speaking, depression is not an illness but a mood disorder where a person always feels like “truth lies”. Some may have mild symptoms but others may have severe ones, feeling the way of being dead leading to actual deadness and repetitive thoughts of being useless. A state of painfulness to be alive plunges us in a situation of frozen thoughts and fear of being brought to reckoning. It may not be wrong to say that many among us are still afraid to share our heart out with our loved ones and keep mutual secrecy with them due to our capricious behavior. A person seen happy outside may not be possibly happy inside but can be struggling due to the dithering behavior of the people around us.

The struggling thoughts and feeling of being lonely can unfortunately lead to steep rise in a social menace i.e., substance abuse. It has assumed alarming proportions in Kashmir. As per reports, in 2020, nearly 952 registrations of substance abusers from Srinagar were made at the hospitals. In 2021, the number rose to 4183. In other districts also, there is a pronounced increase in the abuse of drugs evident from the registration of cases. In 2021, 1666 people addicted to various drugs from district Anantnag were registered, 1565 from Baramulla, 1338 from Pulwama and 1247 from Kupwara. In all these districts, the numbers show a widespread abuse of various drugs and the tightening grip of addiction among youth. Increasing rate of drug addicts is a great menace prevailing in our society and the solution of which is the need of an hour. Indulging in such activities doesn't make us a rid of our worries and depression but instead invites more problems and to fulfill the same, more money is needed for that person can go beyond limits and start indulging in robberies or other stuff.

Have we ever questioned ourselves what is the purpose of our lives? Do we believe in going ahead or behind of what we dreamt about? Drugs are means of negative coping and it is destroying Kashmir and its youth. Economic stress and a subsequent rise in mental health problems have hit the region with the family issues, love failures and most recently the pandemic-related lockdowns. Experts say these elements are largely responsible for the rampant spread of heroin addiction among young people in the region. What can be more dangerous than a 20 year old asking for death because of the problems dwelled in his head due to lonilesss or repetitively getting poor grades or not being accepted by the so called society? Be it any reason, doesn't Allah (SWT) Almighty says in Qur'an 2:286, that He doesn't burden a soul beyond that it can bear and so is the first step towards understanding that things can keep on changing, and so is our mood but we do not need to loose our faith.

Our mood needs to be adaptive; any change in not accepting the change could lead to maladaptiveness. We need to be more open about our feelings with others rather than be in a dingy room and crying all day long. We need to understand that nobody can do it for us, it is us who has to take a step and be a little more expressive without feeling the sense of embarrassment. We live in the right time even if it doesn’t always feel good.  One important thing which is neglected by many of us is that depression only happens among high class, modern or western people and not accepting that it can happen among indigent also. It is not something to hide, if youhide it, it will definitely grow.

Depression needs to be tolerated otherwise it will mutilate our thoughts. We need to be optimistic in our life with full of positive energy and gratitude. Someone has rightly said that the opposite of depression is not happiness but vitality where we find the reason to live and those who are enslaved by the thoughts that life is short and purposeless,they need to update their feelings that life needs to be happy and beautiful and happiness in our lives depends on the quality of thoughts. Think beautiful!!

 

(The Author is Assistant Surgeon. Feedback: mehreenbashir938@gmail.com

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