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Untreated depression can destroy your quality of life. It can make you feel sad, hopeless, fatigue, irritable and cause a loss of concentration. These symptoms tend to vary from person to person. However, depression is more complex than just a chemical imbalance in your brain.

Brain events can occur when someone feels depressed. They can also happen at any time. There is no research that supports the state of your brain as being the cause of depression.

Other names for this condition are clinical depression and major depressive disorder. Depression affects how you behave, think and feel. It can lead to a variety of physical and emotional problems. The highs and lows are similar to a rollercoaster ride. You have difficulty with carrying out normal day-to-day tasks. There are also times where life may seem worthless.

Depression is not a weakness, or a bout of the blues and you cannot just snap out of it. It often requires long-term treatment to get to a better place. However, many people usually feel better with psychotherapy, medication and by making lifestyle changes.

It helps to get an accurate diagnosis when deciding on treatment. Your doctor will do a physical examination. This examination may include lab tests, a psychiatric evaluation and using criteria from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).

The type of symptoms that you experience categorized your depression as a certain type. For example, peripartum onset depression occurs during and after pregnancy. Other types may include anxious distress, psychotic features, catatonia and seasonal pattern.

There are also disorders that include depression as a symptom. These disorders may include bipolar, cyclothymic, persistent depressive and premenstrual dysphoric. It is common for doctors to prescribe medication, but people with depression can benefit from psychotherapy.

Counseling can help you with adjusting to a crisis and find healthy ways to cope. It helps you to identify behaviors that contribute to your depression. If you want to feel better, then you have to change the behaviors that make it worse.

Depression is not categorized as a disease because of not being a biological disorder. The root symptoms of depression are not physical. People who are born after 1945 are ten times more likely to experience major depression. Human biology does not change that fast, which shows it is non-biological. Depression symptoms tend to vary from person to person.

An explanation is that society has changed. There is a breakdown with extended family, an increased focus on self and wealth and the community is divided. These things can make anyone feel unloved and alone.

Stress has a connection to the cause of depression. It causes your body to feel attacked. Your body has to deal with the stress, and the natural reaction is to flight or fight. These reactions may include shutting down, heightening your alertness, suppressing appetite for food and sex, enhancing the delivery of fuel to your muscles and increasing stress hormones levels. It is unhealthy for anyone to stay in this state long-term.

The connection between stress and depression is your thinking under this pressure. The mind tends to use “All or Nothing” thinking when feeling threatened. The additional stress changes the way your brain works. It results in catastrophic thinking and having difficulty with solving problems.

This state also creates a cycle that continues in a loop. You may start to have more dreams because of the release of stress hormones and become more tired, which results in changing your sleep pattern.

The basic idea is that there is a deficiency of dopamine and serotonin that occurs when someone experiences bouts of depression. Dopamine and serotonin are known as chemical messengers, which are called neurotransmitters.

Antidepressants are one of the most common treatments prescribed for depression. This drug can decrease and increase a person’s mood. It also increases the amounts of neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin in your synapses. These effects do not prove the theory of a chemical imbalance causing depression. It just means that your mood can be artificially manipulated with the use of drugs. Antidepressants can make the chemical levels in your brain fluctuate, but it does not support the chemical imbalance theory.

The dynamic system that is responsible for your life experiences, perceptions and mood are made up of millions of chemical reactions. However, doctors cannot determine if a patient has a chemical imbalance or what neurotransmitters are involved. The chemical levels in your brain also cannot be looked at or measured. These are all reasons why a chemical imbalance being the cause of depression is just a theory.