For many of us, it is this time, during the first month of the new year, that today’s word creeps into our lives. The landscape becomes either bleak and white or overcast and grey, the merry times and holiday celebrations are over, and (in many of our cases) the new years’ resolutions are either starting to take a toll on us or we have already given them up, adding a sense of frustration and failure. It seems as if, while coming down from the “high” of the holidays, our mood and mental outlook this time of year really takes a battering, often going to below what we considered to be “normal” prior to the holidays. Whether it be major, minor, or seasonal, with depression (and/or anxiety) affecting nearly 1 in 5 adults in the UK, this is definitely a word that needs closer examination.
Instead of starting with the word, let’s first look at the disease/disorder. Though the causes can be as varied as a chemical imbalance or the result of bad news and the condition can affect anyone, certain demographics do seem to be at a higher risk. For example, women are more susceptible than men (21% to 16%), divorced or separated people are more likely to have symptoms than those who are married or in a civil partnership (27% to 16%), and the unemployed are 8% more likely to show symptoms than those who are gainfully employed (23% to 15%). Interestingly though, one of the most important factors in mental health appears to be physical health: people who are unhappy about their physical health are more than 3 times as likely (38%) to show symptoms of anxiety and depression as people who who are relatively happy with their level of health (11%).
Depression – History
As for the word itself, “depression” comes from either the Old French depression or directly from the Latin depressio(nem), both of which mean “to press down.” Though, over the course of the last several decades, we have come to know the word as almost exclusively referring to the mental disorder, it may be surprising to learn that the word was once more widely and generally utilized.
The word “depression” first appears in English circa 1400 in Chaucer’s A Treatise on the Astrolabe, where, using the term astronomically, he writes: “And that is the depression of the pole Antarctic, that is to say, that is the pole Antarctic beneath the Horizon the same quantity of space”. In 1665’s Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, the word is used in its literal sense to define a geographical/topographical feature, “Of the Nature of the Ground..and of the several risings and depressions thereof.” Finally, for our most widely understood usage, though the term only acquired its psychological usage in 1905, it was first used to denote being dejected or low in spirits in Richard Baker and Edward Phillips’ 1665 work, A Chronicle of the Kings of England, where it was written that, “Lambert, in great depression of Spirit, twice pray’d him to let him escape.”
As a final writing on this, if you are exhibiting some of the symptoms of this word, do seek help and talk to someone about it- there’s no need to suffer in silence.
