Oct 4, 2024
Depression can sap your energy, leaving you exhausted, brain-fogged, and hopeless. Depression is fairly common, around 18% of U.S. adults reported receiving an official depression diagnosis in 2020. The number of people who have ever experienced a depression episode is likely higher, because not everyone seeks help and gets a diagnosis.
Mental health professionals have three tiers in which they diagnose depression: mild, moderate, and severe. All forms of depression are hard; it can feel impossible to get out of bed, complete work, or even meet basic needs like eating and showering. However, it might be easier for some people to force themselves to complete these tasks if they have mild or moderate depression. Others have what’s called “high functioning depression”, in which the person may look all put together on the outside but are severely struggling internally.
Severe depression, also known as crippling depression, is different. It is debilitating and may result in a loss of jobs, relationships, and physical health.
If you have crippling depression, there is hope (even when it all feels hopeless). There are effective treatments for crippling depression and even for treatment-resistant depression.
What does “crippling depression” mean?
Crippling depression is not a clinically recognized term, meaning it does not appear in the DSM-5, the handbook for diagnosing and treating mental health disorders that therapists use. Instead, they use the term severe depression. Crippling depression is used colloquially to describe a deep, pervasive depression that “cripples” or debilitates a person’s ability to function in their lives. Much like a broken leg makes it impossible to walk without assistance, crippling depression makes it impossible to function without help.
Accommodations for crippling depression can be made while one works on healing and recovering from the depression. For example, antidepressants are a powerful way to feel a little better. Medications combined with a support system and coping mechanisms for depression work like a cast for a broken bone: holding everything in place until the ailment can heal.
Signs of Severe Depression
Severe depression can look a little different than mild, moderate or high functioning depression. For one, it's harder to hide severe depression. When depression is crippling you’ll notice the effects at work, in your relationships, and at home. It can feel suffocating.
Severe depression will have additional symptoms from mild or moderate depression. Symptoms of depression (mild, moderate, and severe) include:
- Persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness that affect daily life
- Loss of interest or pleasure in activities once enjoyed
- Significant changes in appetite or weight
- Insomnia or excessive sleeping
- Exhaustion (even when you get enough sleep)
- Difficulty concentrating, making decisions, or remembering things
- Feelings of worthlessness or excessive guilt
- Recurrent thoughts of death or suicide
- Irritability or restlessness
- Physical aches and pains with no clear cause
- Frequent urge to cry, even if it feels irrational
Signs of crippling depression include:
- Decreased quality at work: Crippling depression can result in being consistently late to work or struggling to complete assignments or being alert in meetings. The result can be anything from mild chastisement to being let go from your job. People with severe depression can find it harder to hold down a job and find a new one once they’ve been let go. You might feel like you’re lazy, but it’s really the depression.
- Loss of relationships: Maintaining friendships and a partnership requires time and energy, the latter of which people with crippling depression don’t have a lot of. What they do have is likely used to keep themselves alive; for people with crippling depression, just eating breakfast and brushing their teeth can take all the energy they have for the day. The result can be friendships drifting apart and relationships breaking up. (Communicating with your partner about your depression is the first important step in healing. Partners can be a huge help in supporting you with depression.)
- Suicidal thoughts: People with crippling depression are likely to have stronger feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness, both of which can lead to suicidal thoughts and ideations. If you’ve thought about harming yourself, get in contact with a medical professional right away. Medications and therapy can help.
- Lack of personal hygiene: A clear sign of depression is changes in eating, sleeping, and physical exercise behaviors. However, with severe depression, these changes will be noticeable to everyone. You may struggle with brushing your teeth every day or taking a shower when needed. Feeding yourself can feel insurmountable, so you might rely on prepackaged foods. Taking medication, too, can feel impossible. If you’re really struggling with your personal hygiene and health, consider reaching out to a therapist for a depression diagnosis.
After reading this list of symptoms, if you think you have severe depression, reach out to a mental health professional. Lifebulb Counseling & Therapy has depression counselors near you who can diagnose and help treat your depression, including referring you to a psychiatrist to prescribe antidepressants.
Curious if you have depression? Take our depression assessment and find out.
If you have had thoughts of harming yourself, you are not alone. Lifebulb is not a crisis center, but these resources are. Reach out to them if you need someone to talk to right away. If you are in immediate harm, call 911.
Suicide hotlines:
National Suicide Hotline: Text or call 988
Crisis Text Line: Text Home to 741741
How to cope with crippling depression
If you have crippling depression, you may look for relief anyplace you can find it. Recovery and healing from depression can be hard, but it is possible. These are just some places to start, it is by no means an exhaustive list.
- Medication: Antidepressants aren’t for everyone, and it can take a while to find the right type and dosage. Once you do, it can be incredibly helpful to manage crippling depression. Medications can give you some breathing room from the most debilitating symptoms of depression, so you can focus on building healthy coping mechanisms and addressing the root cause.
- Therapy: There are a multitude of different therapy approaches. If traditional talk therapy doesn’t work for you, you could try Narrative Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment, or Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (which is known for its helpfulness in managing detrimental behaviors).
- Exercise: The last thing you want to do when you’re depressed is take a walk, but the combination of sunshine and exercise really does help. They release a hormone called endorphins, which help raise your mood.
- Find a support system: Who can you trust to help you with your symptoms? Having a friend come help you out of bed or a coworker eat lunch with you so you remember to eat can go a long way in both feeling supported and feeling a little better.
- Build healthy coping mechanisms: Instead of trying to feel 100% better right now, what can you do to make yourself feel 10% better? 5%? What about 1%—what is one thing you can do this minute that makes you feel 1% better? Maybe it’s making your favorite cup of tea or opening the windows or texting a friend. Maybe it’s a breathing exercise or voice-recording a journal entry of your day. Maybe it’s a podcast or participating in your hobby for just a few minutes. Start small and build up from there.
If you’ve tried all these options and are still feeling severely depressed, you may have treatment-resistant depression. Despite its name, this depression is not resistant to treatment. It is just resistant to the most common treatments, namely, talk therapy and medication. As research into depression therapy increases, more intensive options are available for people with severe, treatment-resistant depression. A few of these include:
- Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT): A safe and effective treatment for severe depression that involves the use of electrical currents to induce controlled seizures in the brain, which can help regulate neurotransmitters and alleviate symptoms.
- Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS): A non-invasive procedure that uses magnetic fields to stimulate nerve cells in the brain, particularly the areas associated with mood regulation. Typically administered as an outpatient procedure, allowing individuals to resume their daily activities immediately afterward.
- Ketamine Therapy: Known for its rapid antidepressant effects, Ketamine can bring relief to individuals who have not responded to traditional treatments. It is administered in a controlled medical setting, with close monitoring to ensure safety and effectiveness.
If you have been struggling with crippling depression, you are not alone. There is hope for healing, and it can start today. Reach out to Lifebulb Counseling & Therapy to find a depression therapist near you or browse our depression therapists near you to find one that suits your needs.
