The way you look at life is influenced by family and cultural norms. It is also shaped by experiences, memories, beliefs, and ideas. This is what makes us different from each other and gives us our unique personality.
Everyday stresses can affect the way you feel, think, and behave. These stresses can be from work pressures, marriage problems, separation, rejection, or losing a loved one. This can lead to emotional upheaval and sometimes to clinical depression.
When stresses interact with your personality, you may develop existential depression. Existential depression is a way of thinking rather than a mood disorder. It happens when you start to ask yourself questions about your existence. This self-scrutiny can change the way you value life. This is often because you have an external locus of control–a term used to describe feeling powerless to change your life. Despite these challenges, there is hope for the power to change your life.
Existential Depression Meaning
- Existential depression arises from concerns about how much you value life.
- Core symptoms are a preoccupation with death, isolation, identity, freedom, meaning, and morality. These are also called existential concerns.
- Existential concerns are unique to each person. They are influenced by family, culture, life experiences, and beliefs.
- Meaning therapy is the most effective treatment for existential depression. It addresses questions about what your life means to you. Meaning therapy can help to transform the way you view and how much you value life, despite its challenges.
- Newer drug treatments can reduce existential depression and improve your quality of life.
What Is Existential Depression?
Existential depression is a negative mood state rather than a mood disorder. Low mood develops from reflecting on your existence. The term was used for the first time in 1954 by Heinz Häefner—a German psychiatrist—to describe a condition that has no clear association with previous mental trauma. A person with existential depression starts to question the meaning of their life, feeling powerless to change their life.
Existential depression is more likely with higher levels of stress and in people who value their lives less. Apart from stress, there are wider causes of existential depression. The most important of these is the way you interact with society.
Society provides social bonds that give identity and meaning to life. It provides you with the inner strength to achieve your potential and transform your life. Without an inclusive society, you may experience something called ‘anomie’—a French word for a feeling of alienation from society. This is important because people with existential depression are more likely to experience a worsening of depressive symptoms over time.
Existential depression is important to understand for these reasons:
- Stress can have a sudden impact on emotions. The effect of this emotional whiplash can be devastating.
- Research shows that existential concerns influence how people react to stress.
- Strengthening self-worth can be a buffer against death anxiety.
- An existential approach allows you to start a journey of discovery in finding your strengths to overcome existential concerns.
- People with existential concerns would like professional help to work through their concerns.
- A meaningful life can be found through more effective ways of coping with stress.
- People can flourish after trauma when existential concerns are addressed.
Signs And Symptoms
5 main existential concerns form the condition of existential depression:
Death
Thinking more about death and dying leads to higher levels of anxiety. The Death Anxiety Scale assesses a person’s attitudes toward topics related to death. These include concerns about emotional responses to death, physical changes, the dying process, and how long it will last. Higher death anxiety increases the risk of developing a depressive disorder.
Isolation
A belief that you are being rejected can lead to isolation, with a feeling of being punished for actions beyond your control. This often leads to a lack of authority or autonomy. A study of older people over 9 years found that self-perceived isolation leads to an increased risk of depressive disorder.
Identity
Having low-self worth through a lack of identity can mean an unwillingness to change this view. When this happens, identity distress can lead to a depressive disorder, particularly in younger people.
Freedom
When individual freedom is limited, you may feel something called reactance. Reactance is the belief that when your freedom is limited, you are somehow to blame for it. You magnify negative views about yourself and downplay the positive ones. Reactance can increase the risk of developing a depressive disorder.
Meaning
Meaninglessness is a key feature of existential depression. You feel no point in life, are aimless, with a feeling of emptiness, and doubt the value of life. Meaninglessness also has a strong association with the development of depressive disorder.
All the above can lead to a feeling of hopelessness. In this state of mind, you can feel that whatever you do is futile and that you are not strong enough to change your future. You feel the world will not forgive you and may give up trying to get better. This is called learned helplessness.
Is It Common?
No research has so far studied how common existential depression is in the general population. 75% of people experiencing mental trauma from adverse life experiences report at least one existential concern. A more commonly studied condition is called existential distress.
This condition includes problems such as increased hopelessness, risk of self-harm, increased awareness of feelings of pain, feeling a burden, and worries over death anxiety. Existential distress is most commonly seen in people at the end of life–particularly people with cancer.
Tips To Cope
Use these tips to cope better with existential depression:
- Become more grounded to find your true identity in the real world. Find a source of spiritual comfort that you can see as a ‘higher power’. It does not have to be religious. It may be something else such as connecting with nature. This can guide you to transform your thinking to develop a clear sense of identity.
- Set a vision of yourself for the future so that you can find meaning in life and find something to aspire to. You might find mindfulness can help you achieve this.
- Seek closer relationships with loved ones or seek out relationships to help feel less isolated and more securely attached to others.
- Re-build bridges with others you feel you may have hurt. This can lessen any feeling of guilt through forgiveness.
- If your feelings are overwhelming, seek specialist mental health support.
- Specialist therapies for existential depression can help. They allow you to express your view of the world, understand your potential, and develop hope. These include psychodynamic psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and interpersonal psychotherapy.
- You may benefit from specialist drug treatment. Research using drugs such as small doses of LSD, psilocybin, ketamine, and MDMA have been effective in improving existential depression.
- Meaning therapy can help stop existential depression and improve your quality of life.
- Recovery can be achieved, although this may not always be a straight path.
Treatments
Meaning Therapy creates a positive view of the world from negative experiences. Through information and education, you can find a way forward to lead a wholesome life. A spiritual approach combines choice and commitment to produce personal growth. Building strong relationships, seeing the positives in life, and offering a multicultural approach use your ability to tell your story of lived experience.
The abbreviation ‘PURE’ is often applied to meaning therapy:
- Purpose answers questions about strengths, interests, and values.
- Understanding looks at identity and communication.
- Responsible action finds the right ways to behave.
- Evaluation explores satisfaction with life.
Meaning therapy uses an ‘ABDE’ approach to create a meaningful life:
- Accept reality.
- Believe life is worth living.
- Commit to action.
- Discover new meaning in life.
- Evaluate the new you and move forward.
Conclusion
Existential depression develops from close self-inspection that produces existential concerns. These concerns are around death, isolation, freedom, identity, and meaning. An inability to buffer stress effectively can result in a loss of hope and a higher risk of depressive disorder.
The impact of mental trauma on existential concerns can be magnified by existential distress. An inclusive society can protect against disconnection and feelings of isolation. The same can be said for high levels of spirituality.
Tips for coping with existential depression involve finding inner strengths to address existential concerns. Seeking professional help with treatments such as meaning therapy can open up opportunities for recovery.
Drug treatment for existential depression remains limited but psychedelics hold promise as effective treatments.
Frequently Asked Questions
There is no evidence that antidepressants help with existential depression unless accompanied by a depressive disorder.
People with a diagnosis of depressive disorder, anxious personality traits, high conscientiousness, and an external locus of control are more prone to existential depression.
Contemplating the value of life is a common stress reaction. If this merges into hopelessness that affects health or safety, it requires a further assessment from a mental health professional.
You start overthinking about the meaning of life but are still able to manage everyday activities and maintain relationships. You doubt your self-worth, feel isolated in your mind, and feel negative about your identity. You have little control of your life, and sometimes feel guilty about living.
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