The psychologist Sergio García Soriano takes up the Alphabet of Psychology after a nine-month hiatus due to the pandemic, and resumes these brief content cards that reach the letter “D”, Depression
Depression means oppression or depression from the Latin depressio.
Previously, it was known as melancholy, it was not always considered a disease but could be collected within states of mind of creativity or reverie, being in other times a common adjective such as the “Portuguese-Galician saudade” which he called “the one who yearns ”or the“ spleen ”of romanticism.
At present it is a psychological diagnosis that describes a mood disorder, temporary or permanent, that can cause a disability in the person.
There are different degrees of depression. It should be known that when some of the following symptoms occur for more than six months, they must be diagnosed.
Regarding the affective sphere, we find impotence, acute sadness, decay, irritability, constant discomfort, frustration with life and decreased concentration that reduces academic or work activity.
However, even if the knot is this, there may be problems in the will or even somatize in the body the conflict that exists in the psyche or mind.
It is essential to be clear about the difference between a grieving process (which is logical when someone we love dies) and a depressive process.
In grief, we know that we have lost a loved one; However, in depression, one feels “broken or cracked” inside and knows that he has lost something in his life even though he does not get to accurately identify this loss or what he supposed.
In this way, this process is introjected or internalized in itself, without having elaborated it by symbolic means, by means of words.
Expressed colloquially, the child has a cat that he loves very much, the cat runs away from the house or dies and the child plays at being the cat to work out the loss.
He internalizes it to himself, without being very aware of it. Well, this mechanism would be similar to the one used by adults when faced with disappointment with an ideal, with a project, with the disappearance of a loved one, of a partner …
