Everyone gets the blues now and then. In fact, it's perfectly normal to feel sad and discouraged at times. It's also quite appropriate to feel grief after a loss. However, when a low mood doesn't go away, the person may be suffering from clinical depression. In other words, depression that is serious enough to require treatment. It is one of the most painful, but also most common and treatable, of all mental illnesses. According to the American Psychiatric Association, one in four women and one in ten men can expect to develop this illness at some point in their lives. The good news is that at least 80 percent of people with clinical depression can now be treated successfully with medications, psycho therapy, or both. In order to benefit from treatment, however, you must recognize the illness. Unfortunately, too many people still regard depression as something you just have to live with. Others fail to seek help because of the stigma attached to mental illness or the lack of access to mental health care. As a result, two-thirds of the Americans who experience a depressive illness fail to get treatment.
             Stress is the body's response to change. Since change is unavoidable, stress is a normal part of life. However, when stress is severe or sustained, it can sometimes trigger depression. This is particularly true of stress due to a loss, such as the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, or the loss of a job. But even positive changes, such as getting married, can lead to stress. Some things that a stressful life change would include one death of a spouse or close family member, marital separation or divorce, jail term, personal injury or illness (mostly in males), being fired from work or retirement. In the past, the term "reactive depression" was used for depression that had no obvious outside cause and thus seemed to arise from some biological factor inside the person. Today it is thought that both types ...