DEPRESSION

Most people get depressed at some time of their lives:
it's a fact of life.

Statistics show that a high percentage of people suffer from depression in Britain, and that there are many forms of this condition. Society has never been more demanding on being successful, especially for young men, for whom there is a high suicide rate in this country.

There are many reasons for depression.

I have personal experience of depression, which I would like to share with you. I went through a period like this in my early twenties when I was unemployed. It was in the mid-eighties during the recession. I could not get a girl friend, could not get a job, had no friends. I was very depressed and felt like committing suicide and ending it all. I then decided that I would put my time and energy into building my body, rather than just sitting around feeling depressed. Let me tell you how training and keeping fit changed my life.

When I started training I was about 9 1/2 stone and very skinny. I told a lot of people with whom I could no longer socialise, as a result of being unemployed and having no money, that I was going to train very hard and have a body like Jon Claude van Dam. They laughed at me and told me that I had no chance. At first this made me even more depressed, then I shook myself out of it and said to myself "give it a go, you have nothing to lose". So I did. After reading a lot of men's fitness magazines and writing a training programme for myself, training very hard and eating as well as I could afford to, around about ten months later I was 12 1/2 stones of rippling muscle.

From being so low to feeling on top of the world felt so great. I got back my confidence, found a job and a girl friend, and then decided I wanted to work in the fitness industry, which then led me on to becoming a personal trainer. It taught me a lot about myself and how to appreciate the simple things in life, and made me a mentally stronger person.

The message I am trying to put across is that training and keeping fit is a better cure for depression than any drug a doctor can prescribe; maybe doctors should be prescribing the gym or a personal trainer.

Symptoms of Depression

• Feeling sad or down in the dumps for more than 2 weeks
• Tearfulness
• Excessive guilt
• Rapid Weight loss or weight gain
• Feelings of Fatigue
• Changing sleep patterns e.g. early morning awakening
• Expression of wanting to be dead or wanting to die
• Symptoms of anxiety
• Panic attacks (sudden episodes of fear and physiological arousal which occur for no reason)
• Increased nervousness associated with going into crowded places like the mall or a gym
• Feeling keyed up or on the edge most of the time

A common physiological form of depression is described in the next article on Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).