According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), over 300 million people suffer from depression in the world, a disorder that has a high presence in the workplace, causing a great impact on the world economy, exceeding 2,000 million dollars a year.
This psychological disturbance It is mainly characterized by a low mood, accompanied by feelings of sadness, behavior changes and alterations, low activity and a predominance of negative thoughts. When the cause of it happens to be the work environment itself, we would be in a position to talk about work depression, which can have comorbidity with work anxiety and burnout.
In these cases, the symptoms are somewhat different from those related to common depression. We talk, for example, of continuous absences from work, loss of attention and inability to concentratehaving a negative impact on your proactivity and, in turn, on the self-esteem and confidence of other workers, discomfort exclusively in the professional environment while maintaining stability in the rest of the areas of your life, or a continued lack of energy and motivation that causes that fatigue takes over you on a day-to-day basis and your mood suffers.
Identifying the first signs that manifest in work depression is not always easy, but once you are aware of the situation you are going through. From TherapyChat they give us some recommendations to face it with certain guarantees:
- Detect that you are suffering from a depressive state. In the first place, from humility and affection towards ourselves, we must consider that we are not going through a good moment and we are suffering from some punctual or sustained mental alteration over time, such as a depressive state in the workplace, minor or greater intensity or severity.
- Listen to yourself, recognize your symptoms at a cognitive, emotional, physiological and behavioral level, and accept that it may be happening to you. Assess whether the depressive state is produced by work or other stressors. This will help you remedy and seek solutions and strategies to deal with it.
- Seek help from psychology professionals. If necessary, seeking help from professionals and psychological services will be a possibility that we must consider and that our own organization can even facilitate. Start and commit to the therapy process, this can alleviate the most harmful consequences of your condition.
- Communicate, express and inform. Update your colleagues and others responsible for the situation you are experiencing, since externalizing it will be therapeutic and you will be able to receive external support.
- Request support from the company. Your organization will be able to give you facilities with flexible work, telecommuting, a stock of hours, a day off or even advance vacations if they really perceive that you need it.
- Practice self care. Separating yourself from the work environment for a few hours, days or weeks can help you stabilize your low mood, accompanied by rest and self-care. Prioritize yourself, look for pleasant activities and healthy relationships for yourself. Charging your batteries with positive energy can help you return to your job strong. Physical and sports activity, activities such as yoga, Pilates, meditation or mindfulness may be valuable for your physical and mental balance, joining the contact with the natural environment.
All of this, moreover, not only has consequences for the worker, but also has a direct impact on organizations, causing numerous detrimental effects for them and their work activity as a result of decreased productivity, failures in the development of functions , the promotion of procrastination, lack of initiative, poor communication with bosses and colleagues and, of course, the increase in absences and sick leave.
Therefore, the role of the company will be basic to support people prone to depression at work. It is essential to do so from prevention, with the development of actions to promote emotional well-being and healthy environments for mental health and, above all, from active and empathetic listening in the event that the problem ends up becoming present in the workers, giving them coverage, compression and support to overcome a possible depressive disorder.
