What Is Depression?

Excessive eating or weight gain

• Excessive eating or weight gain
• Excessive sleep
• Fatigue, weakness, and feeling "weighed down"
• Intense sensitivity to rejection
• Strongly reactive moods

Psychotic depression

• People with psychotic depression have severe depression accompanied by psychosis, which is defined as losing touch with reality. Symptoms of psychosis typically include hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that aren't really there) and delusions (false beliefs about what's happening)
• One of Dr. Noble’s patients, two years after beginning treatment, confessed that she had a year during which she would not eat anything her father cooked because she thought he was poisoning her. The woman was otherwise lucid; she simply suffered from psychotic depression that had not been fully treated.
• Doctors usually prescribe antidepressants and antipsychotic medicines together to treat psychotic depression.

Postpartum (or perinatal) depression

• The birth of a baby brings enormous joy but can sometimes lead to postpartum depression (PPD), a type that affects one in four women and one in eight men. In women, postpartum depression is likely triggered by shifts in hormones, fatigue, and other factors. In men, it’s environmental, brought on by shifting roles and lifestyle changes that come with parenting.
• Postpartum depression can begin any time in the first year following a child’s birth, although it usually appears soon after the new arrival.

Intense feelings of sadness, anxiety, and exhaustion become overwhelming and can interfere with daily life. It can provoke thoughts of hurting yourself or your baby.

• Intense feelings of sadness, anxiety, and exhaustion become overwhelming and can interfere with daily life. It can provoke thoughts of hurting yourself or your baby.
• Compared to the “baby blues”–which is a mild, short-lived, and extremely common condition causing anxiety and depressive symptoms in the immediate wake of a baby’s birth–PPD usually requires treatment with antidepressants and/or talk therapy. BetterHelp is a top reviewed online therapy option to help guide new mothers through challenging times and provide treatment options.