Many Faces of Depression : Could that unexplained headache be Depression?

Shruti (name changed) aged 25 years, BA, homemaker and mother of two kids was a good cook and managed her house to perfection, much to anybody's envy until one day she started experiencing sudden severe headache and backache.
These symptoms made her incapable of carrying out her household duties as efficiently as she used to earlier.
Concerned with her pain & apparent symptoms severity, her husband took her to a general physician who prescribed a battery of tests including MRI Brain only to find no abnormality.
Attending Physician prescribed some multivitamin syrups & pain killer medicines & also tried to assure the family that NOTHING was wrong with Shruti.
However, she continued to complain of body aches and headaches, with resultant chaos on home management front compelling her husband to hire a maid to look after all the work including health of Shruti.
Shruti started feeling guilty about this & she started remaining aloof and also had trouble sleeping at night.
Frustrated with the added financial pressure and Shruti's ever increasing health complains, her husband accused her of faking it in order to avoid doing work.
Her in-laws added fuel to the fire citing it was all a drama. This further added to Shruti's sense of guilt and her appetite significantly reduced. 4 months after onset of these symtoms, Shruti lost 10kg weight.
She started remaining on the bed for hours and hardly interacted with anyone. She also started voicing ideas of ending her life in order to relieve everyone off her responsibility & enabling them to lead a happy life!
Now concerned, her parents took the matter in their hands & took her to a psychiatrist.
At the psychiatrist’s clinic, after detailed evaluation , Shruti was diagnosed to be suffering from depression (severe without psychotic symptoms) and the psychiatrist pointed out that the headaches & unexplained body aches were a the starting points of depression itself. She was started on medications and counselling therapy and within 2 months time she recovered completely & once again happily assumed her normal HOME MINISTERS ROLE!
Depression is one of the most common mental disorder and seen in every 4 out of 100 persons as per World health organization (WHO) data
When one thinks of depression; a sad, tearful face comes to mind. But depression is more than just that. unexplained headaches, body pains, sleeping difficulties are often the presenting complaints of depression. Other presentations of depression are chronic tiredness, joint pain,back pain, gastrointestinal problems including frequent acidity, indigestion, appetite changes etc. without any probable detectable physical cause
Depression contributes greatly to the disability caused by headache and backaches. More than 50% of patients with depression who visit general practitioners complain only of physical symptoms and in most cases, these symptoms include pain. If physicians test all pain patients for depression, they might discover 60% of currently undetected depression in their OPD.
Complete Recovery from an episode of depression is possible & achievable to everyone after proper treatment with medicines, counselling sessions & lifestyle modifications!
Next time while visiting your general Physician for any of aforementioned pain symptoms, do ask.....''AM I SUFFERING FROM DEPRESSION? DO I NEED TO SEE A PSYCHIATRIST? AM I RECEIVING ANY MEDICINE WHICH SHOULD BE TAKEN ONLY UNDER SUPERVISION OF A PSYCHIATRIST??''
Remember, Mental Illnesses are TREATABLE!!
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