Are you depressed, or just sad? Why the difference matters more than the label

Many people use “depression” as shorthand for feeling low, while others dismiss depression as “just sadness”. Here, we explain the difference using clinicians’ cues: Trigger, duration, functioning, physical symptoms and the two-week threshold. We also find out how both sadness and depression leave biological traces, why the confusion delays help, and what coping looks like when it’s sadness versus treatment when it’s depression.