Currently, 6.7% of the Spanish population suffers from anxiety and the same percentage from depression. More than a million people suffer from a serious mental disorder and more than half of citizens who suffer from a mental disorder do not receive treatment or the treatment they receive is not adequate, according to data from the Confederation of Mental Health of Spain. Christmas is generally a delicate time for the mood of a certain part of the population, according to the Canadian report”Feelings about Christmas as reported by psychiatric emergency patients » the factors that can influence the change of mood on these dates are loneliness with 40% and the absence of family with 38%. In turn, most report participants used the word “depressed” when trying to describe their feelings about this time of year.

Although suicides increase in this season, according to studies conducted by the WHO, official statistics indicate that the incidence is constant throughout the year, with an average of 33 to 37 cases per month.

However, for a professor of clinical and health psychology at VIU -Universidad Internacional de Valencia, it is fundamental in the first place to understand concepts, feelings and emotions in order to be able to differentiate what happens at Christmas in certain people. “Major depression is a disorder, and as such it is different from sadness, which is a completely legitimate emotion that we can feel in the face of adverse events. One should never confuse one with the other: the confirmation that one suffers from depression must be made by a specialist after several evaluation sessions. It is therefore possible that at this time we feel sadder, but this does not mean that we are immersed in the gray wastelands of depression, which would require specific treatment.

In this sense, the Christmas season can be emotionally difficult for some people, especially for those who have lost a loved one during the year. And it is that, at that time, television is repetitive with advertisements of radiant families in the heat of hearty dinners, under a dreamlike halo of happiness. However, remembering those who are no longer with us makes the feeling of joy easily cut short and eventually turns into sadness.

In turn, this family nostalgia is often confused with the increase in depression at Christmas, and nostalgia is the suffering that arises from the impossibility of returning to a loved place, which is why it is not linked to the Depression.

The VIU expert indicates that depression is a disorder that causes sadness and difficulty in experiencing pleasure, which can be accompanied by insomnia, crying, eating problems, isolation and emergence of ideas about death. Nostalgia, on the other hand, is a feeling that appeals to an eminently human quality: that of feeling more than one emotion at a time. “Our inner life is immeasurably rich because of the infinite combinations of affects that can coexist simultaneously, which also adds the challenge of learning to identify them in order to name and understand them.” Mateu concludes.