Nigel 
June 29th,2009This might be true if you felt down for just a few days,but it certainly is not true of clinical depression.
Everyone feels down from time to time. It’s normal and natural. It’s not what I call ‘depression’ – let’s not insist on adding ‘clinical’ every time.
Depression lasts longer and has major physical effects. It is an illness involving significant changes to the chemistry of your brain. In that sense it really is ‘in your brain’,and you’ll probably feel it ‘in your mind’ as well:it’ll probably make you feel down. But more to the point it will also push many aspects of your physical body down.
I’ll say that again:depression depresses many physical things in your body.
It can make you physically weak,less able to think clearly,disturb your normal sleep pattern,make you very short tempered,and reduce your interest in people,food,TV,sex etc.
Often when depression has started I’ve thought I must be going down with a serious illness. For instance in the 70s I was a keen runner. One January,for a change,I was not depressed hen I ran in the Northants Cross-Country Championships. I finished second over seven and a half miles. I felt great. But I did not get to run for Northants because during the following week my annual depression kicked in. It arrived overnight. Suddenly I had problems jogging a mile and a half round the local park.
Only later did I start to notice other symptoms such as feeling down and getting angry over nothing.
There was no way I could ‘pull myself together’ or ‘snap out of it’. I was physically ill,and there was no medical treatment which could do more than make it easier to cope with being that ill. It felt like the first day out of bed after flu but was much rougher for people round me.
