4 Surprising Ways Depression Affects Your Body

Depression is the heavy blanket over a person’s mind that makes them feel hopeless, sad, and uninterested in the little joys in life. It messes with emotions and thoughts, which would lead you to believe depression is only about what's going on in your head. But is it?

One of the first patients I ever saw was a pleasant middle-aged man. His wife had made him go to therapy because she thought he was depressed. When he came in, the first thing he declared was, “I’m not depressed! I’m not sad—I’ve got no reason to be sad—and I don’t know why my wife thinks I’m depressed at all.”

At first, I took his word for it. He genuinely seemed to have no complaints about the state of his life, which was different from other depressed patients I had seen.

There was something very real, very physical, and very depressing in the room, and I felt it with my body.

But as the meeting progressed, I felt heavier and heavier. My body sunk into my chair. My gut felt like it was filled with lead. Later, my supervisor observed that even the pace of our conversation and slowed to a crawl. There was something very real, very physical, and very depressing in the room, and I felt it with my body.

Depression is a physical as well as mental illness

Our society has made major progress bringing depression, the common and debilitating disease, to public awareness. We've all heard about how depression affects our thoughts and emotions. It makes people less optimistic, more focused on negative experiences, and less interested in things they used to enjoy

What many still don’t realize is that depression is also a physical illness. It’s not “all in your head,” even though it’s called a “mental” illness. It is, in fact, in your head, and in your gut, under your skin, bound up in your body’s temperature, and even etched in your eyeballs.

What my patient didn’t realize was that depression could show up in various forms, not the least of which was in the form of physical changes in his body. It turned out that he was lethargic all the time, had trouble sleeping, constantly ached and tensed, and generally felt foggy. And it showed. By the end of our first meeting, the physicality of his depression had contagiously shown up in my body, too. That’s how I knew that his wife was right—he sure was depressed.

Don’t worry, he ended up doing very well in therapy. Over time, the light turned back on in his mind and body, and he said that it felt like the whole machinery of his body was creaking back into gear. I was reminded of him when brainstorming evidence-based facts about depression for this episode, and it inspired me to review the...

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