4 Signs

March 3 is the National I Want You to be Happy day. 

Pardon my stark honesty, but guess who isn’t happy with this national holiday?

Wanting others to focus on happiness annoys me because it’s in line with how the culture at large—at least in America—idolize joy.

Take a Stanford professor’s paper as proof. She tracked cultural differences between American and German students when expressing sympathy and found the Americans were more eager to avoid negative states of mind than their German counterparts.

Unfair treatment against emotions disheartens the psychologist in me. More than that, it’s also problematic.

When people suppress their emotions, including those instigated by trauma, they unknowingly set those feelings up for an explosion later.

But guess what? When these negative emotions erupt, they get slapped with a bad rap, which motivates people to suppress them all over again, ensuring the cycle will continue.

That’s why this little-known holiday peeved me.

But then I researched its purpose and learned how the founder of this holiday intended March 3rd as a reminder to help one another. Now, this is the kind of mission I can stand behind. Dedicating one day to shower others with kindness seems to be what our culture needs, especially given how isolating COVID has been.

But let’s also be real. About 5% of the world battle depression.

Can I be extra honest with you? Sometimes, the Christian community lives in so much denial you’d think we all reside in Egypt, where the Nile river is.

We wish depression will fade away on its own. We insist on everyone wearing a smile at church and interrogate those who don’t.

To be fair, however, society uses the term depression too casually, diluting its real meaning.

So, let’s discuss what depression is not.

WHAT Depression Is Not:

1. Another Word for Sadness

Normal sadness and grief do exist. For instance, just because your brother said he’s depressed because his team didn’t make the Super Bowl doesn’t mean he’s clinically depressed. This is especially true because according to the DSM V, the handbook mental health professionals utilize, clinical depression requires at least two continuous weeks of a depressed mood.

2. Synonymous with Feeling Blue

Depression involves a loss of interest or pleasure in daily activities. But just because your daughter seems lethargic after her best friend moved five time zones away doesn’t necessarily mean she is depressed, especially if she’s still invested in her regular routines.

3. An Atypical Calm

Trauma survivors, by definition, survived horror. Some grew up in a customary cloud of chaos, which also means circumstances have trained them to tolerate the absence of peace. This is why a subgroup of trauma survivors feels troubled when things are relatively calmer. All this to say, if a stable environment seems to make a family member feel dejected, and you know that this person is a trauma survivor, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are depressed.

What Depression Is:

1. A Mental Disorder

This means depression won’t resolve on its own as time goes by, no matter how many times the depressed individual hears uplifting messages—whether in a cliché or Christianese.

2. Withdrawal from Pleasurable Activities

Those diagnosed with clinical depression exhibit a tangible departure from their usual nature. If your husband has routinely waxed his muscle car every morning for the last 17 years but stopped doing so since he got fired, it’s possible he might be depressed—especially if this new behavior has lasted longer than two weeks.

3. Emotional Symptoms

Are there any other shifts in your loved one’s behavior? Pay attention to these mental and emotional signs:

-poor concentration

-feelings of excessive guilt or low self-worth

-hopelessness about the future

-thoughts about death or suicide.

If you’re noticing these signs, particularly regarding suicide, the first order of business is to remain calm. Refer your loved one to resources like articles and crisis lines.

4. Physical Changes

A depressed person can also complain about disrupted sleep, changes in appetite (which can translate into weight loss or gain), feeling perpetually fatigued or having low energy. In some cultures, like Asians, depressed individuals may more readily complain about bodily symptoms like pain, exhaustion, or weakness. However, for the depression diagnosis to apply, these physical symptoms cannot result from a medical condition.

Care for Depressed Souls

If someone in your family has been showing signs of depression, please make an appointment to see a mental health professional. Depression can lead to suicidal thoughts and deserves to be taken seriously.

There’s nothing wrong with asking your pastor to pray for you, but it’s best to also recruit a professional trained in psychology to join your care team.

Why a psychologist? Why not just an MD?

Because, as I’ve written elsewhere, while all medical professionals received extensive training on the body. not all of them specialize on the soul. That’s why, when you take a depressed loved one to your primary care physician, you’ll likely leave with a prescription (if the doctor agrees that depression is at play).

Let me clarify. I’m not against psychotropics or medications in general. But when it comes to medicating a minor, I propose a hearty caution. Antidepressants pose serious side effects, including an increase in suicidal ideation. That’s why I’d rather research healthier approaches than douse a growing brain with mood-altering chemicals.

Secondly—and please take this from a practicing Christian herself—don’t limit your armament to just the spiritual kind. That’s because relying on spiritual strategies alone to combat depression can be disastrous.

Take a study with Pentecostals as an example. The participants endorsed faith-based approaches as the most effective remedy for depression. Since the Pentecostal doctrine teaches a reliance on the Holy Spirit, including and especially during times of sickness, nothing is surprising here.

But the researchers drew a startling implication. They argued that if these spiritual solutions failed to resolve depression quickly, Pentecostals might assume that the depressed individual lacked spiritual devotion, which could allow shame to sully the situation.

Moral of the story: If you employ only spiritual means to resolve depression and they don’t immediately work, you might feel bad about your faith.

How about if we follow Paul’s example instead? The famed apostle instructed his protégé, Timothy, to consume wine for the sake of his stomach issues (1 Timothy 5:23), a very secular prescription if there ever was one.

But even though Paul’s advice wasn’t spiritual in nature, the Holy Spirit included Paul’s prescription in the written canon.

Might God be implicitly approving the use of other nonspiritual methods by doing so?

I’ve repeatedly witnessed healing unfold through Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy. The model has seized the world’s attention because of its effectiveness to alleviate suffering.

But when we invite the Lord into an IFS session, watch out. What can take months of therapy using other modalities can be accomplished in a fraction of the time using IFS.

Whether or not you end up hiring a therapist, I pray healing for your depressed loved one.