Living with depression can mean a mix of good days and bad.
On good days, your mood might lift until you feel lighter, clearer, and more like yourself. On bad days, the muffling fog might return, sending your mood spiraling down and leaving you feeling slow, drained, and numb.
While depression symptoms can begin to ease in time, especially with help from a mental health professional, they do sometimes intensify, with or without treatment.
Depression that goes from bad to worse can feel even more overwhelming. When your mood fails to lift after a few very bad days, you might begin to wonder, “Is this permanent?”
If you’re already working with a therapist or taking medication, you might feel as if there’s nothing more you can do, which can leave you with a distressing sense of hopelessness.
Know this, though: You have many options for support. Not every approach works for everyone, so getting relief is often a matter of finding the right treatment for you.
Here’s what to know about getting support for worsening depression.
If you typically have mild or intermittent depression symptoms, you might notice immediately if they suddenly become more severe or persistent.
Still, the different types of depression can involve a range of symptoms, and changes might creep up slowly instead of falling on you all at once.
You might not always recognize small but steady changes in your day-to-day mood until you suddenly feel a whole lot worse than you usually do.
If any of the…
