Clinical depression is characterized by a variety of symptoms. The following list is a good summary:

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• Tiredness and loss of energy
• Persistent sadness
• Loss of self-confidence and self-esteem
• Difficulty concentrating
• Not being able to enjoy things that are usually pleasurable or interesting
• Undue feelings of guilt or worthlessness
• Feelings of helplessness and hopelessness
• Sleeping problems - difficulties in getting off to sleep or waking up much earlier than usual
• Avoiding other people, sometimes even your close friends
• Finding it hard to function at work/college/school
• Loss of appetite
• Loss of sex drive and/ or sexual problems
• Physical aches and pains
• Thinking about suicide and death
• Self-harm

Source: http://www.depressionalliance.org/docs/help/what_is_depression.html

If you have experienced five or more of these symptoms, you may have clinical depression. This list is not meant to be a self diagnostic tool. The purpose of this article is to help us define the differences between grief and clinical depression. I feel it is important for you to understand that grief can be worked on in a healthy way and the symptoms will go away. Depression requires medical and psychological work.If you have experienced a major loss, either recently or a long time ago, you will identify with many of these symptoms. Does that mean you are clinically depressed or should be diagnosed with a Major Depressive Disorder? There is no clear cut answer for you personally, but I will attempt to give some general guidelines. These are my practical observations and should be seen as just that.

First of all, if you have experienced a major loss (see my article on “How Many Losses Are There Anyway?” on this blog) you may be experiencing only the signs of grief and not clinical depression. However, you may be experiencing depression and the loss has pushed you deeper into your depression. Sometimes a major loss can also trigger an episode of a major depressive disorder. As you can see, there is no clear cut answer here but there is a way to tell the difference.You can tell the difference if you deal with your grief in a healthy and effective way (such as the Grief-Recovery groups) and your symptoms go away then you know it was grief and not clinical depression. I have observed that this is the case with many people. The good news is that even if you are suffering from a form of clinical depression, successful grief work will eliminate one layer of your depression and that is helpful.

The biggest difference between grief and a form of clinical depression is that grief is primarily emotional and depression is primarily physiological. Depression is a chemical imbalance that most often requires some kind of medication to bring things back to normal. Depression affects the whole being because it is a physical illness. Grief is deep sadness and does exhibit many of the symptoms in the list above, but when the symptoms are treated by good grief work, they go away. Grief is emotional and we deal with it at the emotional level, but depression must be treated medically and psychologically. Grief is a wide range of emotions and some of them are even conflicting, such as, anger at the loss and relief that it happened. Anger can be part of the grief process but it is not be experienced by everyone. There is most often a feeling of sadness, or anxiety, along with, peace and even happiness at times. We can laugh at a memorial service for a loved one and minutes later we are crying. The emotions of grief are many and varied. They are also unique to each individual.

We can usually identify a cause for our emotions. We feel sad when we experience a loss and we know the loss caused our sadness. Grief is circumstantial and emotional. Depression can not be tied to a cause. Grief is healthy for us to experience. Emotions help us adapt and change to the circumstances of life. It is part of the natural ebb and flow of life. Normal anxiety can help us be alert to danger. Grief can cause us to reflect on our life and look closely at our situation. We can learn and grow from experiencing grief. Depression does not tend to be helpful in any way. To further complicate the difference between grief and depression is the fact that depression can come and go in your life. You can have episodes of what is called a Major Depressive Disorder and not even know it. Those episodes can come and go which makes you even more unaware of the depression.

A common problem to both grief and depression is the well meaning advice we receive from our loved ones and friends. When we are grieving or depressed the uniformed advice of others can actually increase our sadness and cause us not to want to seek any healthy advice or treatment.What can we offer to help sort through all this? A place to start is with our Grief-Recovery groups that deal with grief at the emotional level. We do not attempt to diagnose or deal with clinical depression. However, if you can deal with your grief and loss issues you will be better off emotionally whether you have a form of clinical depression or not.

Check out the schedule page on this site and plan on attending one of our groups. We invite you comments on this and other articles.