One major problem with using the word, “depression” in a mental health diagnosis is that feeling depressed is a common fact of life. When we have a setback, lose a job or partner or friend, see our team lose the game, many of us experience a brief time of low spirits. We may not care much about things, might avoid company, and in general feel … well, depressed.
When this happens, most people are able to rally if called to. A friend calls, you’ve got to go to work (or look for a job), you receive some good news from somewhere, and your spirits lift. Even if you’re glum for a while, most of the time you come out of it without much trouble. And this is what people think is meant by “depression” in the context of mental health. But it’s not.
In clinical depression, or depressive illness, the mood is depressed. Unlike ordinary everyday depression, though, there often isn’t any connection to life events. You may not have had any sort of bad news or disappointment. In fact, many people say things like, “Everything’s going great for you. How can you be depressed?” But that’s just the point. Depressive illness doesn’t need any bad news to strike; and good news often isn’t enough to help the person to rally.
You might say that depressive illness or clinical depression occurs when you become despondent without necessarily having any bad news, and when you can’t just “snap out of it” or “pull yourself together.” That’s what makes it an illness, rather than just a low mood.
Many people never experience clinical depression, which makes it difficult for them to understand what it’s like. They’ve always been able to cheer themselves up when they’ve been depressed, snap out of it, pull themselves together, and they assume everyone can do that. So they get annoyed when someone they know languishes for days, weeks, months over nothing. And it is exactly this – being unable to “snap out of it” – that makes clinical depression an illness rather than just a low mood.