Depression Everybody has "the blues" or "feels down" from time to time. It's normal to feel sad for short periods, especially if something bad had happened in our lives. But those of us who suffer from depression have much more than "the blues", and our feelings can last for a long time. There are many sufferers of this illness; at any one time, 5% of Canadians are depressed, and 10-20% will suffer from it at one point in their lives. But family and friends who've never experienced true depression can have trouble understanding what it's like. Many people find it difficult to think of depression as an illness because their are no obvious physical symptoms. But depression is an illness, which is ca