Is Sad Or Depressed, Which Are You?

Submitted By illrican
Words: 1155
Pages: 5

Sad or Depressed, which are you? The majority of people in the world, no matter what language or background we come from commonly use or even cross the words sad and depressed and used them in a way that gives them both an equal meaning. When describing an emotion that we are feeling, or possible an emotion that we may perceive from looking at someone else’s body language or demeanor I think it is safe to say that we either over or under exaggerate certain scenarios with these two words. The words depressed and sad are used in a very similar fashion and a lot of times to substitute each other even though they are actually abstract. Although sad and depressed do help to describe two types of emotions we can feel, they both represent two completely different feelings. Sadness is a much more common and simple emotion we as people have been known to experience and feel, whereas depression is a little less common and pays a much more damaging toll on our physical and emotional state of being.
Sad can be used in many different situations to express an emotional state that everyone at some point in their lives has or will experience. From the loss of a lucky rabbits foot as a child, to losing the life of someone important or close to you. In the Oxford English Dictionary sad is defined as follows; feeling or showing sorrow; unhappy. Someone can claim to be sad because of something they did to cause the feeling or due to something that happened to them or to someone else. The example given in the Oxford English Dictionary is “they looked at her with sad, anxious faces”. In this sentence the word sad is used to describe the physical expression or appearance of the characters, showing their emotion. I would think the best description of sad that I could give would include me at my cousin’s funeral a few years ago. It wasn’t only the fact that she passed away that saddened me, but the fact that she was gone at such a young age. In this situation sad not only described the mental state that I was feeling but also the physical state I was in, so it had a double meaning. The emotion I feel separated sadness from depression in my situation was that after a couple days of it running through my mind and me pondering on every single detail of her life and how my life would be empty without her I began to look at the positive side of the things. I know knew that my cousin was no longer in pain and that she would be in a better place. I just focused on the great memories I had of her and let that be what helped me in this harsh time. So although I was still very sad about what happened, I was never in a depressed state that caused me to not be able to function or do my normal tasks.
Depressed is a very strong emotion that is mainly used to show that someone is beyond any simple sadness someone might feel in certain circumstances, and there are different forms of depression like manic, major, postpartum, and chronic. Depression is a state of general unhappiness or despondency. Depressed not only describes a person’s state but also can describe that of a countries state. The examples of this are: “We are staying several steps ahead of gloom, despair, deep dark depression, and excessive misery. A college student may be depressed due to the fact that they are overwhelmed with the responsibility of college. A mother may be depressed after giving birth to their child for many reasons, including but not limited to, the change in their body. A relative may become depressed because someone in their family has passed away unexpectedly. A country could be financially unstable and can fall into a depression. A lot of times depression starts off as a type of sadness and then the real depression follows after and incapacitates them from doing their normal daily duties. My wife was only eighteen when she gave birth to our beautiful daughter, and soon after a very deep depression fell upon her, some know this as post-partum depression. My wife was