While everyone has experienced sadness, not everyone has experienced depression. In fact, if you’ve never been depressed, chances are that you don’t have a real grasp on what living with this complex mental illness is like.
Depression is insidious. It affects not only your mood, but also your ability to feel, think, and function. It blunts sensations of pleasure, closes off connectedness, stifles creativity, and, at its worst, shuts down hope. It also often causes deep emotional pain not only to the person experiencing it, but to that person’s close family and friends.