The 4 Individual Risk Factors for Depression (How to Fix Them)
The World Happiness Report (2013, chapter 3: Mental Illness And Unhappiness) identifies 4 individual risk factors for depression. These are:
- Low self-esteem
- Emotional immaturity
- Difficulties in communicating
- Medical illness, substance abuse
It is also made clear in the report, that mental health is the single most important determinant of individual happiness.
One of the main reasons why I started this blog was to fight mental health problems. I’ve seen up close what depression does to people and experienced anxiety myself. They are debilitating conditions and something I do not wish anyone to struggle with.
Having found the means to bring joy and happiness back into my life, I felt it was my obligation to share what I know with as many people as possible.
So let’s do just that and take a look at the 4 main individual risk factors for depression as well as options to address each issue.
The 4 Individual Risk Factors For Depression
As stated in the table above, the individual risk factors for depression are:
- Low self-esteem
- Emotional immaturity
- Difficulties in communicating
- Medical illness, substance abuse
I believe that if we sort the individual risk factors out, we can then together work on changing our societies in ways that promote protective factors for social circumstances and environmental factors.
It’s also much easier to change something about yourself than to change something about your social circumstances or environment. So let’s start with ourselves.
The protective factors against individual risk factors for depression are
- Good self-esteem / confidence
- Ability to manage stress and adversity
- Communication skills
- Good physical health, fitness
The Key Is Early Intervention
The World Happiness Report identifies two strategies to improve mental health of the adult population.
- Provide better healthcare and social support for adults who are mentally ill.
- Intervene earlier, since half of adults who are mentally ill experienced the onset of their mental health problems by the age of 15.5
What I specifically want to do with this website and blog is to provide methods for early intervention. But if you suffer from mental health disorders know that help is available. Even though the report suggests that less than 33 % receive care or treatment, it doesn’t mean that there is no help for all.
Anxiety and depression are treatable and curable. Please seek professional help if you suffer from anxiety or depression, but if anything on this website can support you in your healing process, use it.
1. Low Self-Esteem
I will once again argue, that this (among the other risk factors), stems from the way we are raised in our society. We have hopes and dreams that we want to pursue, but we are told to “stop dreaming”.
We are told that we need a certain type of education, with excellent grades of course, and a certain type of job in order to have a good life.
Then we start to pursue this “society’s model of happiness” and find out that it contradicts with the hopes and dreams that we used to have. We are not living the version of us who we truly wish to be and get confused.
We feel like we don’t fit in. Low self-esteem is caused by the fact that you think that you need to be something (that you have been told you should be), instead of just being who you are.
If you feel like you can not be what the society expects you to be, e.g. good looking, well educated, hard worker, successful, you will feel that you are not enough. No wonder this will lower your self-esteem.
Protecting against Low-Self Esteem
Protective factor: Good self-esteem / confidence.
How to raise your self-esteem i.e. gain confidence?
Ultimately, you should learn to live your own truth and not give a damn what anyone thinks of you. Start shifting your perspective to a larger understanding of life. Know that there’s nothing wrong with you and you are perfect just the way you are.
I have gathered suggestions and helpful techniques in this blogpost:
7 Interesting Concepts for a Happier Life
You can also learn to be more confident. There’s a great course for total self confidence by Paul McKenna on Mindvalley (no affiliation). You can start for free with the tips in the video below.
2. Emotional Immaturity
This is one of my favourite subjects and if you’ve read the blog and the about pages on this website, you know that I’m an advocate for teaching social-emotional skills.
The fact of the matter is that we do not learn to control or address our feelings and emotions in a healthy way. We (men in particular) learn to hide and repress our feelings which then pile up and take an unhealthy form later on in our lives. Uncontrolled anger becomes rage, unexpressed envy becomes jealousy and so on.
Any feeling that we repress and pile up inside of us instead of letting out, can lead to mental as well as physical illness.
Protecting Against Emotional Immaturity
Protective factor: Ability to manage stress and adversity.
Learn to express your emotions. Then you will have control over them.
Emotions are meant to be expressed, to be “pushed out”. They are meant to be felt fully. We have all experienced being overwhelmed by anger or sadness, only to discover that once those feelings were expressed fully, they no longer felt “true”. “Why was I angry? What was I even sad about?”, you may wonder afterwards.
Learn to listen to your true feelings and express them in a healthy way totally, fully, completely. Only then can you let go of the feeling and decide if feeling that way is beneficial for you or not.
Here (towards the end of the page) you can find exercises that help with staying in touch with your feelings.
For controlling your feelings, I suggest trying Emotional Freedom Technique, also known as tapping. It’s a very easy and quick process where you tap with your fingers on certain points of your body. This process will calm your nervous system and help you deal with negative emotions.
Learn the basics of tapping here
(no affiliation, just a tried and tested suggestion)
And here’s some more reading on how you can use tapping to help with depression.
3. Difficulties In Communicating
Any good communication starts with the ability to listen and understand others. Luckily we possess a superpower called empathy, which allows us to put ourselves in the place of another and imagine what they think or feel.
Our brains are filled with “mirror neurons” which connect us like Wi-Fi with people you observe. Our mind, on various levels, automatically tunes into other people’s emotions, movements and intentions. We are naturally very good at reading other people’s emotions, this just happens unconsciously.
Improving Your Communication Skills
Protective factor: Communication skills
Empathy and understanding others is something you can learn, I suggest you take a look at my post on the subject here.
And to learn better communication skills, maybe take a look at one of the courses by Udemy (no affiliation):
4.Medical illness, substance abuse
This may be the most critical individual risk factor. Our body and mind are inseparable and one constantly affects the other. See Paul McKenna’s video above to get a very concrete example of this.
I’ve written about our mind-body connection here.
Mental and physical health go hand in hand. The better your mental health, the more likely you are motivated to move and keep yourself in shape.
Likewise, if you are physically active and in good condition, the more likely you are to feel happiness and enjoy life.
Besides, if you don’t have good health, what have you got? Even with all the money in the world you can’t do anything if you have poor health.
So there are many reasons to keep yourself healthy physically and this is such an important topic that there will be a whole page about the subject on this website (being worked on and possibly published in the next 2-3 months).
But while waiting for the complete guide, here are my top tips for taking care of your physical health:
Protective Factors: Physical Exercise
Protective factor: Good physical health, fitness
Resistance training is foundational to your long-term health, because muscle mass optimizes you for longevity. The greater your muscle mass, the higher your survivability against all diseases. Muscle mass also helps you regulate your weight since muscle is the primary means for getting rid of excess glucose (sugar) in your blood.
Physical exercise triggers the release of a protein known as BDNF. It is one of the key molecules that encourage the growth of new brain cells and studies show that people with depression have lower levels of BDNF. Notably one effect of antidepressant drugs is to increase production BNDF.
So working out seems to be a natural antidepressant.
I encourage you to start some form of resistance training. You can go to the gym, buy some weights and start working out at home, or check out some form of calisthenics program where you use your bodyweight to build muscle.
I have no specific recommendations for this at the moment, look around the internet and pick one that suits your needs, preferences and current physical condition.
If resistance training seems like a tall order at the moment, then start with anything. Just taking a daily walk outside for 30 minutes will bring you many of the benefits of physical exercise as well as the benefits of connection to nature.
Protective Factors: A Healthy Diet
I am no more a nutritional therapist than I am a psychologist, but as always I can recommend to you things that have worked wonders for me. Even so, please consult your doctor before implementing any of the strategies I mention here.
By eating right you will notice a boost in your energy, improved cognitive function and of course significant loss of fat.
I’ve been able to keep a steady 10-12 % body fat with these tips:
1. Time restricted eating / intermittent fasting. Eat all your meals during a 6-8 hour period each day, then fast for the remaining 16-18 hours. This will be very beneficial for autophagy. That means your body will start to get rid of dead cells and used-up or harmful material. Fasting also allows your body to
2. Eat clean. Lots of different vegetables are the cornerstone of every meal. At least half of your plate should be filled to the brim with vegetables. Fruits are a good dessert or snack if you need one, although constant snacking is not recommended during your feasting window.
3. Good quality protein. Eat fish, especially wild-caught salmon. Eggs are good, I eat 2-4 eggs a day. Grass-fed beef is okay.
Protective Factors: Foods To Avoid
Rid your diet of processed foods. The more you eat as nature intended (less processed) the more health benefits you will have. There are however some foods that are very non-beneficial for your health. These are:
1. Vegetable oils (seed oils). They are filled with Omega-6 fatty acids that cause inflammation and oxidative stress in your body. Use butter (grass-fed) or ghee for cooking and olive or coconut oil for anything else.
2. Sugar. A highly processed carbohydrate that your body has a hard time processing. For sweetening foods use Stevia, erythritol or honey in moderate amounts.
3. Artificial sweeteners. Maltodextrin is even worse than sugar as it causes your blood sugar to spike. Aspartame can possibly cause cancer and messes with your gut microbiome.
4. Processed wheat and flour. Try to stay away from these processed carbohydrates altogether. If you want to eat bread, pasta or rice, make sure it’s whole grain and only eat a moderate amount. Potatoes and sweet potatoes are healthy options.
Summary Of A Healthy Diet
That’s lot of information to take in on one sitting, so here’s a good rule of thumb:
Eat your meals between 11.00 and 19.00 every day. For me it’s three meals: lunch at 12.00, a protein shake + fruits & berries at 15.30 and then dinner sometime between 18-19.
Fill half of your plate to the brim with veggies, the remaining half fill 2/3 with good quality protein and the final 1/3 with good quality carbohydrates such as sweet potatoes or whole grain rice.
That’s it!
A confession: I allow myself a cheat day once or twice a week. Even then I will not overdo anything, but it really helps me stick with the schedule above for the rest of the week. I really enjoy a good breakfast on weekends so I will not worry about intermittent fasting then.
Please keep in mind that the stricter the diet, the more likely you are to slip. So allow yourself some “cheat meals”. Don’t blame yourself if you fall back to your old habits. Forgive yourself. Start again. It’s all part of being a human.
I myself relapse from time to time and eat foods that I know are unhealthy for me. But I have made a habit out of eating healthy most of the time and I always come back to these tips.
Conclusion
Mental health problems cause unhappiness. Understand and learn to counteract the most common individual risk factors for depression to live a happier life.
The 4 most common individual risk factors for depression are
- Low self-esteem
- Emotional immaturity
- Difficulties in communicating
- Medical illness, substance abuse
The protective factors against these are
- Good self-esteem / confidence
- Ability to manage stress and adversity
- Communication skills
- Good physical health, fitness
You can learn to be more resilient. There are courses and material available for enhancing your protective factors against depression.
The best treatment for depression is early intervention. That’s what I created this website for. You will find tools and techniques on happyondemand.com for treating stress and anxiety, as well as early signs of depression.
If you are depressed, know that help is available and your condition can be treated and cured. Seek professional help but feel free to use any of the tips and tools on this website in an
Disclaimer
The entire contents of this blog are based upon the opinions of the author. It is intended for informational and educational purposes only. The information in this blog is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. Please consult your health care professional before trying any of the products or methods based on this content. I cannot guarantee that you will be free of stress, anxiety or depression, or that you will be happy. I simply want to share with you what I have discovered during my twenty years of seeking happiness and what has worked for me may not work for you.
