The Most Effective Ways to Tackle Morning Depression

Depression is a mental health disorder that makes a person unusually sad and leads to swift changes in moods, especially when making a person cry and/or become unhappy. A key symptom of depression is continuous sadness and low mood conditions. Depression or clinical depression occurs as a disorder, and it can be treated to live a healthy life the person suffering from this issue seeks professional help from psychologists.

Nowadays, the occurrences of mental health conditions like depression, anxiety, and high levels of stress have become increasingly common, especially due to the irregular lifestyle that people might often have to live and the workloads that are increasing massively, or the unhappiness that people face due to unexpected setbacks. When a person suffers from depression, his or her thinking abilities, memory skills, sleep schedules, and so on are all hampered, and the person might end up crying awfully or in the worst conditions might take attempts of self-harm. Such feelings of unhappiness and low mood are often felt particularly in the morning and such issues are commonly termed as morning depression.

About Morning depression

Do you think you are getting wretchedly sad and got a terrible low mood in the morning? This might be due to the morning blues. At times, even morning depression can be painful for a person to bear with, so it is important to get the issue treated. Are you interested to know about morning depression? You are at the right place. This article will help you to get a detailed idea about morning depression, what the disorder truly looks like, the symptoms of this type of depression, the diagnosis of the disease, and most crucially, how to get this type of depression treated easily. So, read the article till the end and handle morning depression smoothly.

Morning depression is a clinical mental health complication, that is categorized as a symptom of a major depressive disorder. But there is nothing much to worry about because morning depression can be treated quite easily if the patient receives the required therapy. The signs that you might have in the case of morning depression can be extreme levels of sadness, anger, fear, anxiety attacks, and frustration, and these extreme emotions of sadness can make you become tired, weak, and exhausted.

It is also important to understand here that morning depression is a condition of diurnal depression as the mood becomes upset, making the person feel sad and frustrated. Though morning depression is different from seasonal depression (depression that occurs due to the change of seasons), experts and mental healthcare professionals claim that morning depression can have symptoms that might be disturbing to the person who is suffering from it and extreme conditions might provoke situations of self-harm as well.

Common symptoms of morning depression

In some cases, the symptoms of morning blues or episodes of depression that affect you in the morning might differ from one person to the other. For some people, morning depression can simply be sadness and fatigue in the morning, but for others, it might be hard to even get out of bed or some might not even want to face a new day. Though there are variations in the occurrences of morning depression, the most common signs, and symptoms a person might experience because of morning depression can be listed here as follows:

• The morning feels gloomy, and the natural cheer of the morning is absent
• It is difficult to wake up
• Excessive sadness and tendencies to cry to begin the new day
• Lack of energy early in the morning
• Brain fog delays physical and cognitive functioning
• Lack of concentration in the daytime
• You are unable to focus on anything that you are doing
• Doing simple tasks become difficult
• Lethargy to perform simple tasks, even making coffee or walking to the office might seem like great tasks
• Intense feelings of anger and wretchedness
• Feelings of emptiness
• Lack of memory and thinking abilities become blurred
• Problems related to your food habit- you are either not hungry at all or you are overeating and taking in almost everything you see
• Feelings of isolation and loneliness
• Mild to excessive levels of frustration
• Sleeping problems- you either cannot sleep at all or you are oversleeping and suffering from hypersomnia
• Things that were once pleasurable and important to you are now seeming to be less important
• Intense feelings of agitation
• Very frequent mood swings
• Low mood and the surroundings look very dull and gloomy.

Apart from these, there are also some other symptoms of morning depression as well, some of which include the following

• Fatigue and weakness remain throughout the week, especially in the morning, due to which the energy remains low
• Low mood can make life look meaningless and it gets worse day by day
• Problems in falling asleep easily, resulting in insomnia
• Persistent feelings of loneliness and restlessness
• Feelings of worthlessness, guilt, and shame that can make you feel unhappy
• Frequent thoughts of death and not being able to wake up the next morning
• Reduced thinking and cognitive abilities
• Difficulties in taking decisions
• The person might attempt suicide or try to harm one’s own self because he or she does not like themselves anymore.

Ways of diagnosing morning depression

There are different methods for the diagnosis of morning depression. In general, for the purpose of diagnosis of morning depression, the healthcare expert or the mental health professional would take the following things into consideration:

• If there is any change in your sleep, body weight, lifestyle practices, or eating habits
• recent events you have experienced in your life
• family and personal history of depression
• how long the symptoms have lasted
• if your mood swings are improving or getting worse
• any medications the person is taking that could affect their mood.

Best ways to handle morning depression

Now that you know what morning depression all is about and what you might face when you truly suffer from morning depression, then it is also vital to have some idea about how to handle morning depression, especially when you do not have the support of your mental health professional instantly. If you feel sad and unhappy due to morning depression, you can try out the following practices to handle the episodes of depression effectively:

1. Work out and do regular exercises:

Doing exercises and working out regularly is not only good for your physical health, but they highly benefit your mental health as well. So, to fight morning depression, you can either take a nice walk, go out for a run, or walk for an hour or so on a treadmill. Doctors also recommend that doing yoga or breathing exercises each day for at least 30 minutes is also good for your mental health and well-being. If possible, you can also do cycling, swimming, or any healthy exercise that you would like to do, and in doing so, keep in mind that such workouts help to keep you calm, relaxed, happy, get a positive mind, and thus handle depression effectively.

2. Do light therapy:

Light therapy, also known as phototherapy, is quite an effective way to handle mental health issues such as morning depression. This is because when a person is going through light therapy, the light that emits from the box in which the treatment takes place is very similar to the natural light. Sometimes, if you let in natural light in your room, you might be able to get rid of morning depression and live a happy and healthy life.

3. Meet a friend:

Sometimes, talking to your nearest and dearest family and friends can also help you in resolving issues, which will not only help you to get rid of your existing problems, but you will also be able to handle morning depression efficiently. Set a date to meet either a dear friend or anyone with whom you can be yourself. You can also consult with your mental health professional and discuss issues that may help you to feel lighter and burden-free.

Some alternative methods of therapy:

Apart from the above-mentioned therapies, you may also follow some other alternative methods or therapeutic practices to handle morning depression, some of which can be listed here as follows:

• health supplements
• herbal therapy
• meditation
• music therapy
• acupuncture
• massage therapy
• tai chi
• relaxation therapy.

Other things that you must follow:

• Stop consuming alcohol and smoking
• Do not skip your meals and have a healthy and balanced diet
• Make your room well-lit and airy
• Follow a proper routine and healthy lifestyle.