#ugblogweek Day5: The Difference between Sadness and Depression

Not that mental health month didn’t have enough focus on these issues, but I thought I would highlight some thing we might have missed that we all tend to confuse.

Sadness is different from depression!

‘Sadness—we are all familiar with it. Taylor Swift has made a career writing songs that tap into this emotion. Yet, Taylor typically maintains a positive outlook at the end of her songs. The sadness she talks about is mostly temporary.’

Yet there is other one that I have an experience with;

“Crying helps me slow down and obsess over the weight of life’s problems.” – me

This is the more extreme emotion than the sadness in Taylor Swift’s pop songs. Some would call this depression.

So what’s the difference?

Sadness is normal. Everyone encounters sadness. Sadness is usually the direct result of a situation, such as a breakup, like in Taylor Swift’s songs.

‘Sadness doesn’t last very long, doesn’t impair your functioning, and doesn’t significantly disrupt your thinking process or distort your view of yourself, God, or life.’

Depression, on the other hand, is something more extreme.

When these sad feelings deepen and persist over the course of weeks or months, it worsens into clinical depression. Unlike sadness, depression involves feelings and emotions that interfere with your state of mind, impair functioning in many aspects of life, and disrupt your view of God, self, or life in general.

Some basic differences include:

– Depression involves a loss of self-esteem. Sadness doesn’t affect self-esteem.

– Depression lasts weeks to months. Sadness lasts for several hours or days.

– Depression convinces us there is no hope, while sadness doesn’t.

– Depression disrupts our relationships.

– Depression is a serious illness. Sadness is a normal and beneficial warning sign.

If we start looking at it like that, then we will win at fighting mental illness

Patricia Kahill

Patricia Kahill is a multipotentialite Christian entrepreneur, Content Marketing Coach and founder of the Content Marketing agency, Kahill Insights that helps business owners create engaging and interactive content items for digital platforms with a focus on returning a desired outcome. Patricia was the producer of SlamDunk Basketball Talk a show on House of Talent online TV, a former fellow at Harvest Institute for leadership and now an assessor there, and an alumnus of the YELP class of 2017. A member of the BNI Integrity chapter and African Women Entrepreneur Cooperative. She is driven by passion and curiosity, been taking every opportunity that has been given to her with an ambition of stamping her footprint on the world.