<div class="block">October is Depression Awareness Month and we&#39;re highlighting a few elements to consider in your own life. Dr. Liat Jarkon joined &#39;beWell&#39; to detail what depression could look like and when professional intervention might be necessary.</div>

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Be Well: Understanding Depression

October is National Depression Month. It's a time to focus on mental health education and depression Awareness, Director of the Center for Behavioral Health at New York Tech psychiatrist, Doctor Leat Jan is here with some helpful information. Thank you so much for being here. At first. I wanna start off because a lot of people know that being sad or in the dumps is one thing. But what is the difference between that and actual depression? That's a great question. I think the distinction is important to make everyone can have a bad day or a bad week. Uh But when it gets to being more than that, that's when you start making a difference. There's three basic elements. One is intensity, the second is duration and the third one is whether it's damaging your social functioning. So if you're feeling bad and it's over two weeks and you're starting to not go to work and not go to school, avoid your friends, it's time to get checked out. So what are some signs maybe to your family or friends that you are experiencing depression? So people start talking about just feeling sad and feeling hopeless and not having energy, uh, appetite can go up or down, significantly, sleep can go up or down significantly. And one of the things that's not talked about a lot is somatic symptoms. People have physical symptoms and they start talking about things like having a headache, a stomachache, just vague symptoms. Actually, a lot of people experience depression at some point in their life. Right? How about what percentage, you know, recent Gallup poll said about 29% of Americans at some point in their life will have depression. You know, there's some statistics coming out of Stanford medicine saying that um women more than men, the prevalence is about 10% to maybe like 6% are suffering from depression and currently is an estimate of 21 million people in the country suffering from depression. Now is some of that hereditary or is it? Ok. Yeah, we know that it runs in families if you have immediate family members, which includes parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, first cousins with depression, you're about 2 to 3 times more at risk of developing depression yourself. Yeah. Are there treatments that someone can get if they are there are many, many treatments? Some of them are the traditional medications that people are aware of antidepressants. Sometimes mood stabilizers are added to antidepressants. Antidepressants alone don't work. There's a lot of experimental things out there. Shannon uh medical cannabis, ketamine, psilocybin, they're experimental. I do urge people not to go online and get them to do it themselves, which is happening. Uh But rather to do it in a clinical setting. Well, what if people just aren't sure they are depressed clinically or not? Are there ways they get screened? Absolutely. Mental Health Association of America has screenings online. They're bilingual and they talk about, they screen things for like depression anxiety, PTSD bipolar disorder. Um And it's really important that they get screened and what's the number one takeaway? You want people to remember when talking about depression, it's important to get screened. Your life matters, you matter. Um And prioritize your mental health.