The Difference between Sadness and Depression
Knowing the difference can significantly impact your quality of life
In my years of private practice I’ve met many people who were struggling with depression but thought they were merely sad. I’ve also met many people who were extremely sad and worried they might be depressed. Because we associate depression with its primary symptom of pervasive sadness, many of us struggle to tell the difference between these two common psychological states. And that is a huge problem.
Our confusion can lead us to neglect a serious psychological condition that requires treatment (depression) or on the other end of the spectrum, overreact to a normative emotional reaction (sadness). But what makes the distinction absolutely crucial is that recognizing if we (or a loved one) are depressed has huge implications for our long-term mental health, physical health and even for our longevity.
The Difference between Sadness and Depression
Sadness is a normal human emotion, one we’ve all experienced in our lives and will experience again. Sadness is usually triggered by a difficult, hurtful, challenging, or disappointing event, experience, or a situation. In other words, we tend to feel sad about something. This also means that when that something changes, when our emotional hurt fades, when we’ve adjusted to the situation, when we’ve gotten over the loss or the disappointment, our sadness remits.
Depression is an abnormal emotional state, a mental illness that affects our thinking, our emotions, our perceptions and our behaviors in pervasive and chronic ways. When we’re depressed we feel sad about everything. Depression does not necessarily require a difficult event or situation, a loss, or a change of circumstance as a trigger. Indeed depression often occurs in the absence of any such triggers. People’s lives on paper might be totally fine, even they would say this is true, yet they still feel horrible.
Depression colors everything in our lives, making everything less enjoyable, less interesting, less important, less lovable, and less worthwhile. Depression saps our energy, our motivation, our ability to experience joy, pleasure, excitement, anticipation, satisfaction, connection, and meaning. All your thresholds tend to be lower, you’re more impatient, quicker to anger and to get frustrated, quicker to break down, and it takes longer to bounce back from everything.
In my TED Talk (which you can watch here (link is external)) I discussed one of the more unfortunate consequences of this confusion, which is how people struggling with depression are often expected to "snap out of it," and are told "it’s all in your head," or "choose to be happy!" Such sentiments reflect a deep misunderstanding of depression and how it feels and certainly only makes the person with depression feel worse.
The Symptoms of Depression
To be diagnosed with depression, people need to have at least 5 of the following symptoms for a continual duration of at least two weeks: Be advised that the severity of these symptoms must also be weighed, so please use these as a guideline and see a mental health professional for a conclusive diagnosis.
1. A depressed or irritable mood most of the time.
2. A loss or decrease of pleasure or interest in most activities, including ones that had been interesting or pleasurable previously.
3. Significant chances in weight or appetite.
4. Disturbances in falling asleep or sleeping too much.
5. Feeling slowed down in your movements or restless most days.
6. Feeling tired, sluggish and having low energy most days.
7. Having feelings or worthless or excessive guilt most days
8. Experiencing problems with thinking, focus, concentration, creativity and the ability to make decisions most days
9. Having thoughts of dying or suicide
If you think you or a loved one might be depressed, it is important you seek the counsel of a trained mental health professional for diagnosis and treatment. Depression is an extremely common mental illness and there are many kinds of treatments for it that benefit most people.