How is sadness different than depression?

Sadness surrounds an event, depression is more long term.

Depression interferes with your daily life and normal functioning and causes both you and those around you pain.

Depression sucks you down into a place like dark dungeon. You feel like you’ve been there for years (even though it might be a day) and you just know you will never get out. It is uncontrollable, and saps any desire you have to control it, because you know it’s simply impossible. You might as well die.

If people around you don’t understand that you are now (and always have been) the most worthless piece of shit on the planet, then you have to make them understand, by attacking them and driving them away.

Sadness is when you have emotional pain—something went wrong, something you wish you could change, and it might be difficult (if someone you loved died), but often is possible. You can pull yourself toegether. You can bear it. You understand that some time it will be over and that happiness is possible again.

Mostly, I think that’s the difference: whether you think it can end, or not.

Depression is a feeling of hopelessness, meaninglessness, that goes on for a longer time than “the blues,” and is unlightened by any joys.

Here is a screening test.

I haven’t been depressed myself, but my ex has, and from talking about it extensively with her and supporting her, I think @daloon nailed it pretty much. It’s that your feeling terrible and there’s no hope for it getting any better.

A common problem with depressed people is that their close friends try to cheer them up, and by definition, it’s just not possible, which just makes matters worse.

Read the Diagnostic Statistical Munual IV (DSMIV)

To clarify the differences between normal sadness and depression, the DSM-IV* defines specific criteria for the diagnosis of major depression. A person who suffers from a major depressive disorder must either have a depressed mood or a loss of interest or pleasure in daily activities consistently for at least a two week period. This mood must represent a change from the person’s normal mood and impair his functioning in his daily life

@daloon: You’re describing Major Depression. Not to be confused with more mild forms.

In my family, we use “sadness” when discussing aging, decrepitude and death with my mother. If she were 30 years younger, we’d use the term “depression” to describe the same symptoms. It is common Geriatric terminology.

So many of her limitations are not caused by volition but infirmities. She needs a walker, has two hearing aids and is recovering, unhappily, from a broken wrist caused by a fall. She has voiced her wish to go to sleep and not wake up. I can joke and ask her if she wants me to push her off a bridge. Sh still laughs, which is good.

My own criterium is that when I wean myself off the Zoloft, after it has completely left my system, I feel as tho I am wading through molasses.

Dysthymia is the sort of low-grade depression, where everything’s blah most of the time. No fun. Sadness seems, to me, to come from a loss. Depression is something deeper, and it’s usually because some emotion that hasn’t been fully expressed (like anger or sadness or grief) got buried instead and has mutated into depression, which, as other have mentioned, feels like it’s a permanent part of the landscape.

I’ve found, having had depression…one of my biggest battles was deciphering between sadness and depression. I think I had depression for so long, I couldn’t recognize just sadness. Now that I have, and realize “hey, i’m just sad, no need to be depressed” it has helped a lot.
Depression is a deeper sadness. It’s like falling into a hole, and you cannot see properly.

@asmonet I think you’re right. I was just describing my experience, which was like nothing I’d ever had before, or believed possible. I think that if the shrinks say so, then there must be lower grade depressions. However, for any one individual, I could not begin to diagnose them. They’d have to see a doctor or a shrink to really know.

Minor, major, I don’t care. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. Well, actually there is one person who I think should be experiencing it—out of guilt for what he did. I’m sure he feels pretty bouncy though, down there on his ranch, hanging out with his big oil cronies.

;)

I can see your side of it, it’s common for those who have an intense experience with depression to understand their version of it best. Generally, the deeper the depression, the less one can imagine there is something less debilitating. Not because of a close-minded nature but simply because their experience was so profound. This may not be the case for everyone, however, of those I know who have suffered through major depressive episodes, it seems to hold true.

I for one, seem to fit into the dysthymia category, however I think once certain things in my life no longer apply, things that have been around for over ten years, I will be able to free myself completely of those issues.

The spectrum of depression, sadness, moodiness, etc. is so broad there’s just no way I would be comfortable summing up everything in a tiny little package without extremely vague descriptors. I would not want to accidentally mislead a legitimately ill person with my own story. If someone thought they were depressed, read something that was a personal account and then decided it didn’t fit so I must not need help…I’d feel awful.

I’m not saying you did that specifically, just that I would personally be cautious with describing a disorder with such personal criteria as an example. Perhaps, saying something more general and expounding on your personal story would be best?

Uhh, this turned into a bit of a rant. My bad.

I appreciate everyone’s answers. My counselor mentioned dysthymia this afternoon, and said that when people are constantly combatting sadness over a long period of time, with no respite, then mild depression sets in. He asked me what I thought would make me feel better, and I had a deliberate, albeit infeasible, answer. Even though people have free will and choice, circumstances dictate choices that are sometimes not in your best interests, when you choose based on responsibility to others and the compromises are not extreme in nature; they still wear away.

Thank you all.

I’m glad we could help answer your question, I completely understand the ‘wearing away’. Many of the points you made struck me personally and are very similar to what I’m going through, I wish you all the best.

I apologize for the poorly constructed run-on sentence

Sadness is because of something that happened. Depression is all consuming. Your brain stops functioning properly and you cannot control it. You are exhausted all the time, no matter how much you sleep. You are not able to do the most elementary daily tasks and most of the time you do not even know what you are doing. You lose huge chunks of your life that you cannot give any account of. Well, at least, that is how I experienced it!

If soomething happens that is profoundly and fundamentally wounding, the sadness leads to depression quickly. That is situational depression and causally different from chemical depression. They feel the same, however.

well depression you just feel like doing nothing you know and sadness is just when you get sad and get over it fast