An important premise. This article is about how the mountains can help you find your good mood again in moments of melancholy and tiredness. Real depression is an illness: if sadness, lack of energy or loss of interest last more than two weeks, or make everyday life difficult, talk to your doctor. If you are having thoughts of harming yourself, call 112 straight away or Telefono Amico (02 2327 2327).
The mountains are a difficult place, often desolate and lonely. They confront us with considerable physical and psychological hardship. And yet the mountains can give us moments of true joy, feelings of fullness that daily life, in its ordinary monotony, cannot give us.
What is depression?
Depression, in its milder forms, is a disorder of mood and responsiveness. Depressed people show the most varied symptoms, usually an up-and-down mood and a more frequent state of dissatisfaction, along with sadness and an inability to react to difficulties. In the most serious cases depression makes people unable to carry out ordinary daily activities normally.
Facing depression by going to the mountains
The first thing we must understand is that, to feel better, a step of our own is needed too. Nobody can convince us with words that it is easy to get out of depression. I could say that at the same time it is "not easy" but it is also "simple". Simple because the solution is simple.
The mountains for fighting depression on your own
All I can do is offer you my personal recipe for facing depression, that slight sense of bad mood of a boring, monotonous daily life. That sense of negativity that pervades everything, when nothing seems to make sense any more.
Going to the mountains
Going to the mountains, in company but also alone, allows us to tune in and synchronise our mind with our body and our body with the nature around us.
The first thing to do is to decide to leave the house. Break out of habits, break the daily routine by making uncomfortable choices. A hike in the mountains, even the shortest hike, on a mountain close to home, can help us. We do not have to think straight away of conquering Mont Blanc or Everest.
Even just a walk along the paths of a mountain wood can be useful.
The antidepressant effect of the mountains
The healing and antidepressant effect of a hike in the mountains is immediate. Our body is finally stimulated on many levels: the smells, the colours, the damp on the skin, the vastness of three-dimensional space, the physical effort, the positive vibrations of a new, natural environment. All of this sets our brain in motion.
Those who are in the habit of going to the mountains know it: the effect is beneficial and lasts over the following days. The blood circulates through the whole body and the mind wakes up.
There is no point shutting yourself up at home to think in order to solve your mood problems; you need to go out and get away from home for a while to be able to see things from the right distance.
The beneficial effect of the mountains lasts over time and can go alongside, but not replace, the help of a doctor or a psychotherapist when needed. Nature offers us a great deal: you just need to know how to take it with simplicity and humility.
Finding the energy to leave the house
If we cannot find enough strength and desire (or will) to leave the house, we can lean on a group of friends, an association or a hiking club. The emotional support and backing (even unconscious) that comes from the presence of others is a priceless stimulus for finding the strength and courage to go out.
It is not simple, nobody ever said it was, but it is certainly not difficult either. The only thing asked of the hiker is the desire to walk, a good pair of shoes and a camera.
Coming home with a few nice photos will spur you to go out the next times. There is nothing better than the desire to repeat the positive feelings that come from being immersed in nature.
If fear and tension get hold of you in the mountains, read also Ansia in montagna (anxiety in the mountains).