The causes of depression doesn’t hold a clear picture of its own. The internal emotional condition can be disturbed by many factors:
- Psychosocial factors
- Life stressors like loss of a parent in the first decade of life or loss of spouse, which is generally correlated with major depression.
- Continuous stress over a long period of time programs the brain into operating in stress mode all the time.
- Misconception of life events, low self-esteem and loss of hope.
- Disappointments in life like failure in love or job insecurities or embarrassments.
- Traumatic events
- Medical or physiological factors
- Endocrine disorders like hypothyroidism, diabetes
- Neurological disorders like Parkinson’s disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s dementia
- Head injury, chronic pain and AIDS
- Nutritional deficiencies
- Electrolyte disturbance
- Emotional or physical trauma
- Psychotic disorders
- After delivery
- Withdrawal from medications like opiates or barbiturates
Understanding of the modern psychiatry is important for the practice of homeopathy in cases of depression but according to the philosophy of homeopathy, the patients are not encouraged to be categorized into sections or classifications as it believes in treating the sick not the disease, therefore the depressed person needs to be treated, not the just depression.