Depression is a mental health disorder where one experiences lack of interest in activities and has a continuously depressed mood which can lead to serious impairments in that person s daily life.

Day by day, the number of patients suffering from depression is increasing. More than the facts, it is various myths people hear that makes them more vulnerable when suffering from this mental health disorder. Below are the 5 common myths and facts regarding depression.

Myth #1: Lazy people suffer from depression
People who have a lethargic life suffer from depression and hardworking people never experience it. This is probably one of the most widely believed myths about depression. However, in reality, it is excessive work pressure and overworking and the feeling that they are bound with responsibilities and are being exploited at the workplace that causes depression. Anyone can develop this mental condition, and workload and lifestyle do not always have something to do with depression.

Myth #2: Women are the main victims of depression
Another popular myth regarding depression is that it is women who mainly suffer from it. Yes, it is true that women are more sensitive than men, but developing depression has nothing to do with gender. Anyone, at any age, at any time, can suffer from depression.

Myth #3: Talking can never help in easing depression
There are some people who believe that depression is a mental health disorder, is only treated with psychiatric medicines that can help in dealing with this condition. However, what they don't understand is that doing something constructive and having positive conversations with their loved ones can actually benefit their mental health. Even, psychiatrists believe that talking sessions are one of the ways of treating depression.

Myth #4: Depression is the same as sadness
Consistently unhappy and sad people are often considered as being depressed. However, the fact is that both sadness and depression are two different things. While one can get over the former condition of feeling low and sad; suffering from depression leads to chemical changes inside the brain, causing changes in the behaviour, thinking, etc. of the affected person, thereby persistently damaging the daily life.

Myth #5: There s no link between depression and Physical exercise
Many people assume that physical exercise isn't helpful in dealing with depression since it is a mental illness and not a physical condition. However, the fact is that moderate amount of physical exercise not only helps in improving mental aspects but also boosts the concentration power of the person.

No matter how mild or serious the form of depression one suffers from, opting for psychiatric help becomes crucial to avoid risks of deterioration of the condition in any way. After all, a professional psychiatrist can not only help one suffering from depression by treating them with necessary medications and therapies but also help in differentiating the facts from the myths thoroughly.

5 Myths About Depression Debunked!

Psychiatric disorders like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia do not appear all of a sudden. There are small changes that happen to an individual over a long period of time until the disease fully develops. These signs and symptoms might be too subtle in the early stage for other people to notice until they become obvious. But an early detection of any irregularity proves to be more beneficial for the patient in the long run.

It is important to know the telltale symptoms of mental disorder to distinguish between what is regular and what is not.

Withdrawal
Everyone needs some quiet time to cool off and relax but if a person continuously withdraws him/herself from social occasions and avoids meeting or speaking to friends, it could be a sign that something is wrong. Losing interest in life, work and people are symptoms of depression and psychotic disorder.

Thinking problems
Having trouble concentrating, remembering, understanding and explaining oneself in a coherent manner are some common signs of mental disorder.

Anxiety
Excessive stress and anxious behavior for a prolonged period are not normal. Frequent heart palpitations, headache, shortness of breath, racing mind and restlessness are cries of help that need to be heard.

Emotional outbursts
Sudden dramatic outbursts for no apparent reason, frequent mood swings and feeling distressed are potent signs of mental illnesses. These kinds of behavior are seen as part of a person's nature and so they are often unnoticed.

Changes in appetite and sleeping patterns
Oversleeping may be a sign of depression and insomnia could be a sign of anxiety. Changes in appetite and not caring about oneself or the world are indicators of a mental problem.

5 Silent Signs Of A Psychiatric Disorder

The number of people affected by hypertension is constantly on the rise. The most important concern with people developing hypertension is that it is not an isolated issue. It brings with it a host of problems, including higher chances of stroke, heart disease, diabetes, and kidney diseases. While there is no definite cure for hypertension, it is definitely possible to control it using the following measures.

Weight control: Greater the body mass index (BMI), higher is the chances of developing hypertension. Check with your doctor to know what the ideal weight is and try to maintain it. If overweight, losing even 10 pounds can make a big difference to your blood pressure.
Diet management: Excessive salt, calories, fat, and sugar are to be avoided. Sodium is one of the main culprits for increasing blood pressure and should be avoided. Include fruits and vegetables that are rich in potassium and magnesium. Reducing salt is another major way to control blood pressure. Fish oils with omega-3 fatty acids are extremely good for the health of the heart and so consult your doctor to include the right amounts in your diet. 
Exercise: A regular workout regimen can reduce the chances of developing blood pressure by up to 40% to 50%. This should not be misinterpreted as the need for vigorous workouts. Even small, regular physical activity daily goes a long way in controlling blood pressure.
Alcohol: While quitting alcohol is the best thing to do, for those finding it difficult to do so, cutting down on it plays a big role in controlling blood pressure. No more than a drink per day for women, and no more than two per day for men are recommended.
Stress management: Stress is one of the major causes for increasing blood pressure, and so managing stress is very important. Whether music or meditation, pick your stress buster and see your blood pressure lowered.
Medications: If you are already on a medication regimen, strictly adhere to the schedule. Consult your doctor before adding herbal supplements or dietary supplements. Taken individually, they may be good for health, but there are good chances of them interacting with your regular medications.
Monitor: Once you have been diagnosed with high blood pressure, have periodic check-ups with your doctor to ensure it is within the permissible limits. If beyond limits, immediately correct it.
As noted, hypertension is not an isolated issue and brings with it a whole lot of issues. Controlling it can help control the other issues that would follow and improve the quality of life.


Hypertension: 7 Best Ways to Control it

HOW TO BOUNCE BACK FROM FAILURE

“It's fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure,” Bill Gates said. We always shower praise on those who have triumphed. Very rarely do we examine all the times the successful people have failed, and analyze how they turned their “luck” around. In this tip, you will understand how to turn failure into success and bounce back with more fervour.

1. A SUCCESSFUL MINDSET: If you’re striving to achieve anything then failure is inevitable. “Whenever you’re trying a new experiment, whether it’s a new job, a new product, a new hobby, a new boyfriend or girlfriend–whatever it is–you need to give some thought to what is your strategy and which are the possible ways to achieve it. Do you have any plan B or plan C if plan A fails? What will you do if nothing works out...and how to minimise the losses as well as taking advantage of the opportunities that you have. Assessing your opportunities and threats to success is very important. When a newly wedded girl comes to stay with her In laws, she might need to have a number of ways in her kitty to make her place in the new household rather than just stick to a few traditional ones. If one technique doesn't work, try something else. Disaster strikes when creativity is not given a place and failure was not factored in. Feeling helpless doesn't add upto success. Optimism is what people need to bounce back with.

2. LEARN AND IMPROVE WITH EACH FAILURE: Failure is just an opportunity to learn and improve. It’s a teaching moment that should be analyzed with a practical, clear mind. It helps to see mistakes as stepping stones to learning and improving and using it as an opportunity to bounce back. Every person should behave like a scientist with a mind open to exploring, assessing, making mistakes and changing. Mistakes must be embraced as being part of the process of success. If we don’t make mistakes it means that we’re not trying, and if we’re not trying then we’re not learning and getting better. Your self-worth should not rest on perfectionism, but rather value your ability to accept and learn from your mistakes. Not everyone is willing to admit when they’re wrong, which can hamper progress and relationships. When Meena and Arun started dating each other, they didn't know each other well and tried to impress each other in ways that was not working out well for both of them. It was very frustrating for them to see that their relationship was not working out. In counselling, they realised that they were not asking what each can do to impress the other. Meena told Arun that she would like to be taken out to plays and theatre by her future partner and Arun told Meena that he would like to take weekend trips to nearby destinations to get to know his partner well. When they both started doing what the other appreciated, they got to know each other better and relationship started blooming. Thus Arun and Meena assessed the situation, were open to discussion and found an amicable solution instead of thinking of their previous efforts as failure and giving up. 

3. LOVE YOUR CRITICS: How do you feel when your work gets criticised repeatedly by your boss, manager or your husband. It mighty be hurtful and demeaning to hear critical feedback, but if many people are saying the same things about your work or behaviour, then maybe it's time to give it a serious thought. When Saira was often told that she wasn't cooperative enough in team activities and tends to slacken and pass on work to other members, her mind started working. She had got the same comments in her previous organisations. She started seeing a grain of truth in this feedback and took steps to rectify complaints that stood out common in all the feedbacks and reworked her way back to become a sought after team member. Her next years' appraisal was better and got her an increment. Saira triumphed, because she knew how to learn from criticism.

4. ACCEPT FAILURE AS AN IMPORTANT PART OF LIFE: Shivani was heartbroken when her 15 year old perfect son started doing badly in exams. Her world fell apart when she came to know that he had secured 73% in 10th grade. She felt that she had failed as a parent and her son as she had not devoted enough time to her son as she was a working mother. In counselling, she was asked if she knew any parent who had never failed their kids and were always there for them. Shivani couldn't come up with any names of such mothers who had been perfect to the core. Yes, that's how real mothers are...you will fail sometimes and you will win sometimes. Every moment you are real with your child, you are succeeding as a mother. Accepting failure as a part of life and knowing that you gave it your best shot is good enough. There's magic in feeling genuine regret rather than overkilling guilt and shame. Own your failure openly, publicly, and you'll reap a harvest of forgiveness, trust, respect, and connection—the things you thought you'd get by succeeding. Ironic, isn't it?

5. GO WITH YOUR GUT: When you see a red flag, pay attention. How many times in life have you kicked yourself for not listening to that little voice in your head that says, “Something is wrong here”?. Preetam gave an interview with an organisation, going by their market reputation. Yet during the interview, he picked up feelings of dissonance within the company. After joining them, he realised that his gut was right..the company was going through major shuffle and policy changes, which were not working out for Preetam.

6. BE A PROBLEM SOLVER AND STAY CALM: In a crisis, people tend to get anxious. Maintaining a sense of Zen will not only allow you to think more clearly but will also set the tone for those around you. Kapil used to get tensed over small details. He realised that in the larger scheme of things they were really not that important. He focussed his energies on things that were more important for him to reach his monthly targets. This started calming him down.

7. FIND A SOLUTION: You need to figure out how to address and remedy the situation. Start by considering your end game — what’s the ultimate outcome you’d like to see? — and work backwards from there. Daya wanted to be a good father to his children. He wanted them to remember him as a gentle and loving father. He started working backwards and his daily actions and behaviours showed to his children that Daya was a loving father. He played with them, took them for cricket coaching, went swimming, shared personal success and failures and most of all listened to them when they had to say something.

8. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY OF YOUR MISTAKES AND FAILURES: If you screwed up, don’t make excuses — just apologise genuinely for any errors on your part. Remember, that no one is perfect and it's human to err. Prema was a caring mother. She had many dreams about her daughter and wanted her to do well in studies and be a well behaved child of the family. But when her daughter started showing disinterest in studies and marks started falling, Prema used to beat up her daughter in her anxiety to do well. In counselling Prema understood that her intentions were good, but the way she communicated were not helping the situation as Prema's daughter hated her mother and maintained distance. Prema owned up her mistakes and apologised for her errors to her daughter. She also took remedial action to be accepting of her daughter and gave her the space to make her own mistakes and learn from them. 

9. BECOME PROACTIVE: Don’t let a small mistake linger and turn into a bigger one. That’s not to say you should simply be reactive, but i f you know you did something wrong, deal with it right away. Say, for example, you stuck your foot in your mouth during an important business meeting and inadvertently offended your boss or a client. Acknowledge the gaffe, apologize and try to move on without beating yourself up. Remember that, “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.

10. DEFINE YOUR OWN SUCCESS AND FAILURES: Its important to have your own definition of both rather than how the world sees and defines success and failure. Find answers to questions like: How would you be behaving when you have succeeded, what must happen to feel successful, how will your life change when you are successful? Every person has a very different view and definition for success and making it your own definition can spell failure. Don't let the world tell you whether you have failed or succeeded. It's also excellent for self esteem and works as a protective shield from potential damage. 

So, next time there’s that misstep, mistake or misunderstanding, remember to take a deep breath and be your own best publicist by remaining calm, seeking the solution and seeing the challenge as an opportunity to lead and learn.









How To Bounce Back From Failure - Tips From A Pyschologist

When it comes to the brain and the iq, is bigger the better? does size really matter? is there really a connection between the size of your brain and intelligence? with the help of findings by neurologists 
And scientists, we seek to find out!

1. Ailments and the brain: scientists have found that children with autism have a brain that has grown in a disproportionate manner in the very first year of their life. This prevents the child from making connections with normal behaviour. On the other hand, children and adolescents who suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or adhd have shown signs of having a much smaller brain size. Many scientists have shown that the size of the brain shrinks as we age, and this does not have any visible effect on our cognitive abilities.

2. It's all relative: the size of the brain does not really have a bearing on the way a person's cognition gets shaped. Even large mammals like elephants and whales are finally hunted and tamed by humans who have smaller brains in comparison. The brain is made up of billions of neurons which need to function properly. It may be seen that scientists consider the brain mass in relation with the rest of the body so as to speculate about the cognitive abilities of the person. Why is this required? large animals need a well functioning and proportionate brain size to control and run their organs with proper cognition for satisfactory results, which is what we humans seem to have done.

3. Neanderthal brains: historically, the earliest man or the neanderthals are said to have had larger brains than we do. These people are believed to have brains that are at least 10% larger than the brains that we have in our modern times. The shape of their brain was different too. They were also heavily muscled people which had a bearing on the size and shape of the brain and bodies as well as the lean tissue within the brain. They also survived very successfully for a period of over 200, 000 years, which obviously points to some form of elevated cognition, as per many scientists.

4. Animals: while animals with small brains like lizards and reptiles do not perform too well on iq tests, the animals with bigger brains like elephants and dolphins perform much better. But the medium sized brains of monkeys, lemurs and other animals are said to perform in the best manner. The correlation between the body size and the brain does not seem to hold good here, as per various researches.

So the verdict as per medical science and research stands divided!

Is There an Association Between Brain Size and Intelligence?

If people understood the benefits of laughter and it could be packaged and sold in bottles, then it would sell the most. Laughter and humour is contagious and easy to  make and use. It has many therapeutic benefits besides just enjoying a good joke. When laughter is shared, it binds people together and increases happiness and intimacy. Laughter also triggers healthy physical changes in the body. Humor and laughter strengthen your immune system, boost your energy, diminish pain, and protect you from the damaging effects of stress. 

A. Laughter is good for your health:
1.Laughter relaxes the whole body. A good, hearty laugh relieves physical tension and stress, leaving your muscles relaxed for up to 45 minutes after.
2.Laughter boosts the immune system. Laughter decreases stress hormones and increases immune cells and infection-fighting antibodies, thus improving your resistance to disease.
3.Laughter triggers the release of endorphins, the body’s natural feel-good chemicals. Endorphins promote an overall sense of well-being and can even temporarily relieve pain.
4.Laughter protects the heart. Laughter improves the function of blood vessels and increases blood flow, which can help protect you against a heart attack and other cardiovascular problems. 

B. The link between laughter and mental health:
1.Laughter dissolves distressing emotions. You can’t feel anxious, angry, or sad when you’re laughing. You will feel lighter, happier and confident.
2.Laughter helps you relax and recharge. It reduces stress and increases energy, enabling you to stay focused and accomplish more. It has the capacity for a person to be in touch with the present and bounce back faster from problematic situations.
3.Humor shifts the perspective, allowing you to see situations in a less serious light. You will be able to see your own mistakes as errors of judgement, learn from them and move on. You will feel less anxiety and panic reducing your heart rate and muscle tensions.

Shared laughter is one of the most effective tools for keeping relationships fresh and exciting. All emotional sharing builds strong and lasting relationship bonds, but sharing laughter and play also adds joy, vitality, and resilience. And humor is a powerful and effective way to heal resentments, disagreements, and hurts. Laughter unites people during difficult times.

C. Humour improves your Social Relationships
Incorporating more humor and play into your daily interactions can improve the quality of your love relationships— as well as your connections with co-workers, family members, and friends. Using humor and laughter in relationships allows you to:
1.Be more spontaneous. Humor gets you out of your head and away from your troubles.
2.Let go of defensiveness. Laughter helps you forget judgments, criticisms, and doubts.
3.Release inhibitions. Your fear of holding back and holding on are set aside.
4.Express your true feelings. Deeply felt emotions are allowed to rise to the surface. Its easier for others to take constructive feedback when sandwiched between something light and positive. 

D. Making opportunities to laugh together:
1.Watch a funny movie or TV show.
2.Go to a comedy club.
3.Read the funny pages.
4.Seek out funny people.
5.Share a good joke or a funny story.
6.Check out your bookstore’s humor section.
7.Host game night with friends.
8.Play with a pet.
9.Go to a “laughter yoga” class.
10.Fool around with children.
11.Do something silly.
12.Make time for fun activities (e.g. bowling, picnics, games) 

However, it is important to keep in mind that you don’t laugh at someone or in their absence. Don’t resort to sarcasm and witticism, which is not clean humor and showing sensitivity towards other people’s sentiments. So take out your laughter arsenal and get ready to shoot.








LAUGHTER: THE BEST MEDICINE

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