When Being Tired Is Actually Depression
Depression may be among the most common mental health issues, but it is still often misunderstood. Many people assume that the condition manifests itself in really overt sorrow and hopelessness. But the symptoms tend to be much broader, and often more subtle. Including fatigue.
The link between tiredness and depression is not linear and can be challenging to tease apart. But the connection is there, and mental health experts say it’s an essential one to be attuned to — perhaps more than ever during Covid-19, which has profoundly influenced people’s mental health and upended sleep routines.
Here is the lowdown on depression and fatigue:
Being tired is a very common symptom of depression.
“Fatigue affects more than 90% of people with major depressive disorder,” said Nadine Kaslow, a professor with Emory University School of Medicine’s department of psychiatry and behavioural sciences.
And fatigue does not just mean that it feels physically difficult for you to wake up in the morning (though it certainly could) or that you’re nodding off midday (though that is also a possibility).
Fatigue might also manifest itself more as a general, persistent lack of energy. Even relatively simple tasks feel like they require a lot of physical and emotional effort.
The relationship is complex.
When it comes to depression and fatigue, “there may be an underlying ‘piece’ that is causing both,” said Betty Lai, a psychologist and assistant professor with Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development. She pointed to the possible role of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal, or HPA axis, which is a system that helps regulate the body’s response to stress.
“Chronic stress can disrupt the functioning of the HPA axis and lead to problems in both sleep and depression,” Lai explained.
So a shared biological underpinning may be one reason for the fatigue-depression connection, but it is by no means the only one. About 80% of individuals...
