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Category: Depression
One Simple Way To Help People With Depression
Unfortunately, many people do little to help those with depression.
Unfortunately, many people do little to help those with depression.
Many people are reluctant to reach out and help the depressed.
The study of Facebook examined how friends reacted to posts about depression.
The results revealed that friends were unlikely to recommend getting help, although they provided some minimal support by liking the post or sending motivation messages.
In fact, none of the 33 people participating in the study, many of whom were depressed, were told to get professional help by friends.
Dr Scottye Cash, the study’s first author, said:
“It makes me concerned that none of the Facebook friends of students in this study were proactive in helping their friend get help.
We need to figure out why.”
The study focused on 33 students who had reached out on Facebook for help when depressed.
Half of the people in the study were moderately or severely depressed and one-third were experiencing suicidal thoughts.
Dr Cash said:
“There’s no doubt that many of the students in our study needed mental health help.”
Depressed students typically said they had had ‘the worst day’ or described feeling very alone.
Some used song lyrics or emojis to convey their emotions.
However, they did not generally use the word ‘depression’, Dr Cash said:
“They didn’t use words like ‘depressed’ in their Facebook posts
It may be because of the stigma around mental illness.
Or maybe they didn’t know that their symptoms indicated that they were depressed.”
Some friends generally reacted in a supportive way, while others asked what was wrong.
Dr Cash is sympathetic with friends who did not pick up the signals:
“For the friends reading these posts, they often have to read between the lines since few people came right out and said they were depressed.
Many people used quotes and song lyrics to talk about how they’re feeling, so their friends really had to decode what they were saying.”
Recognising the signs of depression is difficult for people, said Dr Cash:
“Both Facebook and colleges and universities could do more to give these students information about resources, mental health support and how to recognize the signs of depression and anxiety.
We need to increase mental health literacy and decrease mental health stigma.”
The study was published in the JMIR Research Protocols (Cash et al., 2019).
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The Surprising Personality Trait Linked To Depression
The type of people who are more sensitive to negative emotions.
The type of people who are more sensitive to negative emotions.
People who are more open to experience are at higher risk of depression.
People who are open to experience are more likely to be imaginative, sensitive to their feelings, intellectually curious and seekers of variety.
In particular, people who are into art and in touch with their emotions are more likely to experience depression.
It may be because artistic people are more sensitive.
The conclusion comes from a study of 143 people who were given tests of personality, focusing on the personality trait of openness to experience:
“Open individuals exhibit an increased awareness of, and receptiveness to, their feelings, thoughts, and impulses, as well as a need for variety, or a recurrent need to enlarge and examine experience.”
Some people in the study had never been depressed, some were depressed in the past and the remainder were currently experiencing depression.
The authors explained the results:
“Depressed participants (both current and past) scored significantly higher than nondepressed participants on the broad factor of Openness, as well as on both Openness to Aesthetics and Openness to Feelings.”
Sensitivity to the arts is probably linked to sensitivity to negative emotions, the authors write:
“It seems more likely that individuals who are attuned to beauty and the arts might be more sensitive, in general, and might therefore be more sensitive to, and affected by, negative events and stimuli.”
An appreciation of art and the experience of depression may be strongly linked:
“…the experience of depression may lead to an existential ”reexamination of the purpose of living,” and consequently bring the depressed individual “in touch with the mystery that lies at the heart of ‘tragic and timeless’ art”
Similarly, Ludwig (1994) suggested that the experience of depression (as well as other emotional problems) serves to fuel the writers “motivation for expression, . . . providing them with the basic ingredients for their art’.”
The study was published in the Journal of Personality Assessment (Wolfenstein & Trull, 1997).
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