The 5 Stages of Depression, and First Warning Signs

A large number of people are diagnosed with major depression each year. It is a disorder that hinders and even invalidates the subject’s normal functioning due to the high discomfort it produces, being one of the most common mental disorders known both to psychology professionals and to the general population.

This problem appears in different ways and due to different causes, but in general it is possible to observe a process with different phases. That is why in this article We will talk about the stages of depression a succession of psychological alterations that it is necessary to know to understand to what extent this psychopathology can affect us.

What is major depression?

Major depression is one of the main mood disorders and one of the two most common mental disorders, competing for first place with anxiety disorders.

suffer from this problem involves experiencing a wide possible variety of symptoms among which at least a sad and depressed mood and/or anhedonia or absence of pleasure in previously pleasurable activities must appear. Other typical symptoms are sleeping or eating problems, as well as a search for isolation. As we will see, depending on which of the phases of depression we find ourselves in, we will be more prone to suffer from one symptomatology or another.

Depressed people often adopt a passive stance towards life, feeling helpless and hopeless. They lose motivation and the desire to act, and over time they end up avoiding activities that were previously pleasant, since they already consider them to be meaningful.

Likewise, it produces a deterioration in the ability to concentrate, pay attention and remember. In some cases, aggressiveness and impulsivity also appear, being an irritable state more common than sadness in cases of childhood depression.

Subjects with a depressive disorder manifest a series of cognitive biases that make them grasp reality in a distorted way, which leads them to maintain automatic negative thoughts towards the person themselves, their future and the world that are organized as schemas of thought. dysfunctional thinking. Likewise, they tend to attribute errors to internal, stable and global factors, which facilitates distorted depressive thinking.

The causes

This disorder has a large number of possible origins which may be due to biological factors (as in endogenous depression) or external factors.

The most common thing is that in all cases there is an event or situation that triggers the appearance of feeling of helplessness and hopelessness. It may be a traumatic event, the accumulation of small stressful events, or the existence of insufficient reinforcement.

Stages of depressive disorder

Although depression can have different types of courses and the specific symptoms can vary from person to person, it is considered that those who suffer from it It goes through a series of phases until it is fully developed. They are the following:

1. Triggering event

Although there are vulnerability factors such as genetic inheritance or sensitivity to damage that are important when triggering a depressive disorder, this usually comes hand in hand with the experience of a negative event, which will end up triggering the first symptoms. issues.

The triggering event causes birth to begin in the subject feelings of vulnerability and sadness and even helplessness and hopelessness if the aversive situation continues over time.

If these sensations continue without the subject being or believing himself capable of overcoming them, depression may occur.

2. Activation of cognitive distortions

The triggering event causes the person to activate a series of cognitive schemes, that is, the way in which their ideas and beliefs about the world and about themselves are related.

This, in turn, causes the interpretation of what is happening to her to change, generating cognitive distortions that make her see the world as something hostile and herself as something helpless, incapable and desperate. This is the stage of depression in which many of the beliefs on which one’s own life is based begin to change.

3. Appearance of symptoms

From the distorted processing of information, the person begins to manifest the typical symptoms with a low level of positive affect and a high negative affect, some of them being a sad mood and a decreased ability to feel pleasure, mental and physical slowing down, and a search for isolation.

4. Vital inhibition

The appearance of apathy, anhedonia and avolition (respectively lack of energy and motivation, pleasure and desire or will to act) typical of depressive disorders causes the depressed individual to end up moving away from activities that you previously liked such as hobbies and other passions, actively isolating themselves and/or decreasing their productivity, effectiveness and commitment.

5. Appearance of depression-maintaining problems

The set of symptoms of a depressed person usually causes, over time, the appearance of new events or aspects that they can worsen or keep the symptoms in mind.

For example, although at first the depressed person tends to arouse the sympathies of their immediate environment, over time the situation of the affected person and sometimes their desire for solitude ends up being aversive, producing a distancing of the individual from their environment. This induces the perception of lack of support, which accentuates the existing problems and the feeling of vulnerability, helplessness and hopelessness.

The phases of depression in bipolar disorder: a different phenomenon

It is possible that some people confuse major depression with the type of depressive symptoms that arise in bipolar disorder, since in the latter psychological problem there are clear changes in the mental states that the person goes through. Starting from this erroneous point of view, the stages of depression would include several points in which the person feels euphoric and in a very good mood; but this is not so.

It is essential not to confuse the development of major depression with the development of bipolar disorder which is a totally different psychopathology, although both are included within the concept of mood disorders. As we have seen, in the first case it is normal that there is no phase characterized by mania and, on the other hand, this is typical of bipolarity.

Possible treatments in therapy

These stages or phases of depression tend to occur frequently in almost all cases. Subsequently, the individual can resort to psychological and/or pharmacological therapy in order to treat your problem.

Based on the response to treatment, it will be possible to enter a phase of partial or total remission of symptoms and even achieve complete recovery.

However, it must be taken into account that sometimes we encounter relapsing depressions, in which several depressive episodes occur over time with seasons of partial or total remissions. In these cases In addition to the previous stages we can also talk about relapse which must also be attended to.