DISABILITY ACCESS: Empowering Tribal Members with Disabilities & Their Families


Provided by Spirit Lake Consulting, Inc.

Emotional and Behavioral Disorders - DEPRESSION & Other Mood Disorders

Imagine how you feel when your child runs at you in the morning and throws her arms around you. Imagine how you feel when you go to a friend’s home, it is a beautiful day out and they have made your favorite meal. Now imagine never having those feelings again. The world doesn’t have any color, joy or laughter in it.

People with Attention Deficit Disorders often cause problems for both themselves and others. People with behavior disorders cause problems mostly for other people, which end up with problems for themselves, like expulsion from school or incarceration. People with mood disorders such as depression may go overlooked, because their problems mostly affect themselves.

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"To get a doctors' diagnosis of clinical depression (also called 'major' depression), you have to have at least five of the following symptoms, including number 1 or number 2, for at least two weeks:

  1. Depressed mood (feeling sad or low)
  2. Loss of interest or pleasure (in activities you normally enjoy)
  3. Significant appetite or weight loss or gain
  4. Insomnia or hypersomnia (sleeping too little or too much)Psychomotor agitation or retardation (being restless and jittery, or alternatively, slower than usual)
  5. Fatigue or loss of energy
  6. Feelings of worthlessness or excessive guilt
  7. Impaired thinking or concentration; indecisiveness
  8. Suicidal thoughts/thoughts of death.

From the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders, 4th ed. (DSM-IV)" Source: "Dark Side of the Mood" from the Australian Broadcasting Company's website.

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Depression in native populations

Spirit Lake Consulting, Inc. -- P.O.Box 663, 314 Circle Dr., Fort Totten, ND 58335 Tel: (701) 351-2175 Fax: (800) 905 -2571
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