Morning Depression: Symptoms, Causes, And Treatments

You have opened up your eyes in the morning after a dark sleep.

But from the very first moment, a heavy feeling sits on your chest the moment you wake up, and you feel sadness.

Getting out of bed seems impossible.

Most of us feel the same thing, hard to get out of bed.

But with people who are struggling with depressive disorder, this is not just normal; it is often.

For them, it is not just being tired. It is a heavy feeling that sits on their chest the moment they open their eyes.

What Is Morning Depression?

If you feel your mood is at its worst when you wake up, or you feel waking up sad, this is morning depression. There is actually another name for this, i.e, diurnal mood variation. It means your mood follows a kind of schedule.

Most people with depression feel down all day, but for some, the weight is heaviest in the morning and slowly lifts as the hours pass. Let’s look at what’s really going on here, why it happens, and what you can do to feel better.

Is Morning Depression Another Type Of Depression?

Depression in the morning is not another type of depression; rather, it’s just one way of it that can show up in your life. If you wake up feeling depressed, you know the struggle. Mornings hit hard. You wake up heavy, sad, or just empty. But as the day goes on, things start to lighten.

By evening, you might even feel almost normal again.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) classifies this as a ‘melancholic feature’. But this is not the same as Seasonal Affective Disorder (Winter Depression), which is about winter and sunlight, which relates to the time of year and the lack of sunlight in winter. Morning depression can happen every day, and no matter the season.

Symptoms of Morning Depression

Morning depression feels the same as regular depression, but it hits hardest right after you wake up.It’s as if your alarm goes off, and instead of a fresh start, you get a wave of heaviness.

Common signs include:

• • It seems like you have no energy. It’s very much like your energy never gets charged overnight, even after an 8-hour sleep.
  • It feels like heavy fatigue, tiredness, and the body feels heavy.
  • You feel difficulty even with small things and tasks like showering or making breakfast.
  • Even if it feels like mind fogginess and feels hard to make a simple decision like what to wear, it suddenly takes all your effort.
  • Negative thoughts show up early.
  • You stay in bed longer than you need to, just hoping the day will somehow get easier if you wait.
  • Irritability sneaks in. You find yourself snapping at people or feeling frustrated before you have even had coffee.
  • Your appetite goes weird. Breakfast sounds terrible, or you eat more than usual just to feel a little better.
  • Low or no concentration, as it feels hard to focus on work or conversation, even reading a text message, can feel like too much in the morning.

What Causes Morning Depression?

Psychiatrists and experts do not have a single answer for why depression symptoms peak in the morning. However, they believe that the cause of waking up depressed involves a mix of how our bodies work and the habits we fall into.

The Internal Human Body Clock

Circadian rhythm, this is all about your body’s internal clock. This is what tells you when to sleep, when to wake up, and even messes with your heart rate and body temperature. It is also in charge of the chemicals that make you feel awake or sleepy.There are two main hormones that play a role here.

• • Cortisol. This hormone helps you wake up and feel alert.
  • Melatonin. This hormone helps you fall asleep.

Normally, a healthy body gets a boost of cortisol just before dawn. People with morning depression, this hormonal shift may be out of sync. Research from Science Direct suggests that the hypothalamus, a part of the brain, just works differently for some people with depressive disorder.

Body Inflammation

Inflammation is how your body reacts when something is wrong, stress, or an injury. If you are feeling depressed, it might be because your body is making more of a chemical called interleukin-6 (IL-6).

This chemical usually peaks in the early morning, which can leave you feeling tired and depressed before you even start your day.

Sleep Disturbance

Quality of sleep is a big deal in depression. There is a strong association between sleep and depression. If you are not getting that deep, restful kind of sleep, your brain misses out on its nightly repairing process. Have you ever woken up with the feeling that you barely slept? Things like sleep apnea, with its repeated breathing interruptions, can leave you feeling tired and irritable, struggling to focus, and at higher risk for serious issues like high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, depression, and morning headaches. This type of tiredness can feel a lot like depression.

Other Risk Factors

There are other things that can pile on, too:

• • Genetics
  • Life happenings, trauma or sudden, unwilling events
  • Medications
  • Use of alcohol or other substances
  • Long-term physical pain or thyroid issues

How Professionals Identify The Condition?

If you talk to a psychiatrist about feeling low in the morning, they wouldn’t just look at one day. They will zoom out and ask about your whole mental story. They want to know if your mood has a rhythm to it. They will ask you questions like:

• • At what time of the day do you feel your best?
  • Does this happen daily, like difficulty in getting out of bed?
  • Do your moods change significantly between 8:00 AM and 8:00 PM?
  • How long have you felt this way?
  • Are you able to focus on your work in the afternoon?

They will find out the symptoms and the clues for your treatment process.

Treatment Options For Morning Depression In Inland Empire Behavioral Group

There is no magic fix for you that works for everyone. Most people end up mixing different things until something clicks in their mind.

Talk Therapy

Therapy is one of the few things that makes a real difference and brings things back to normal. One of the types of talk therapy is cognitive behavioral therapy. It is like having someone who listens to your feelings and suggests treatment options and steps accordingly.

It’s a chance to look at how the people around you shape your mood, and to talk it out somewhere safe.

We have the best psychiatrists and expert psychologists who know how to treat symptoms and reduce depression overall, not just in the morning. Depression comes with other mental disorders as well.

So we don’t just treat depression, we can also look for other symptoms as well and reduce their symptoms as well.

Final words

Do you sometimes wake up with those heavy feelings in your chest? Sometimes your brain and body just need a little extra help.

Maybe it’s your sleep, maybe it’s stress or something else. But you don’t have to figure it out yourself. We are here to help understand those feelings, like morning depression and find solutions as per the requirements.

Our aim, to make you stress-free, let you see the day as something you get to do, not like something you have to survive.