There are some physiological reasons for being depressed or unhappy, such as medications that change the chemical balance in the brain. These chemicals affects a person’s mood when they are not in balance. A chemical imbalance is the reason in the bipolar patient you see a person who goes from being extremely elated and so happy they seem unable to contain themselves to extremely depressed. It takes medication to restore the bipolar person’s chemical balance.
Patients who have high blood pressure are one example of people affected by medication taken for another ailment. The medications used to control high blood pressure and often accompanying edema caused by high blood pressure greatly deplete several chemicals in the body and changes their mood. The high blood pressure patient often suffers from depression.
All of us have at some time in our life met people who seem to be “happy go lucky”. It may be that these people have just a slightly higher ratio of the chemicals in the brain which make people feel happy than the average person has.
In some cases, a person has endured a very bad trauma as a child, such as rape, incest, molestation, or witness a terrible crime. Often this person feels at blame for the incident that happened to them in the case of a sexual crime against a child. A person who witnesses the murder of a parent as a child may feel they did not do anything to save their parent. Blame and guilt manifest into withdrawl from social situations and in depression.
A person must love themself before they can be truly happy. If you cannot love yourself you cannot love others and you are usually not really happy in anything you undertake.
How each of us perceive life and how we deal with events in our life affects our level of happiness. There will always be a number of things that happen to us which we cannot control. If a person dwells on those unfortunate events when there is nothing they can do to change the situation or outcome, they only become very unhappy. It is far better to try to develop an attitude of “what will be will be” in these cases and only concern ourselves with the things which we can change.
Any person suffering from anxiety or depression needs to consult their physician. It may be that the general physician can prescribe something which can help. In cases of previous trauma or severe depression, the person may need to be referred to a psychologist or therapist. Seldom does depression that has lasted more than a week or two vanish without treatment or medication.
